Affair: The End of the End
by RalphZiggy
Summary: A sequel to Frog-kun's The End of the Affair. Originally published June 26 2016 to July 1 2016, now with new material in epilogue!
1. Ties of Youth

_There is a wonderful OreGairu fanfic on this site, Frog-kun's The End of the Affair. The work seems to be as if season 1 of the anime, or about half the volumes of the Light Novel, were to occur but the path of the rest not taken. It is not wonderful because it gives the fan comfort or warmth or happiness, but rather because it contains problems and issues that real people have, and most importantly for the reason it tears a hole in the soul of the fan, desiccates the heart and makes a haunting ache that lingers. Oh wait, that's horrible isn't it? But those negative trajectories of our beloved characters' futures, the antithesis of what most of us anime/LN/manga readers seek, are the things that make it so fine a work. But some of us survivors need a healing balm, and so I have mixed this concoction for that purpose. Beware there will be pain here too though, we need to wash the wound and hack out the necrotic tissues before we can apply the salve, yes?_

_Apologies to Frog-kun for the clumsy hijacking of your vessel!_

_The romantic relationship with which this story starts might not endure either. But I see hints of it in the parent work, and it is a necessary part of the earthwork now. There will be some sprinkles of season two or later volumes mixed in but Frog-kun's story is forked from going that route so major parts of that canon will be ignored or sidestepped._

* * *

Drifting about the grounds of the high school of my long gone late teen years like a rolling fog with no purpose through groups of students I don't recognize, did not seem abnormal at all. For that was quite the default state of mine even in those days, and most people in that institution were ever and always unknown to me. Only through one involuntary activity, a sentencing to an asylum of sorts by a most unusual teacher, did I ever become friends and acquaintances with some of them. Somehow the bell tones that sound from many directions and PA speakers on the campus I know to be the dismissal signal for the last class of the day, and I have a realization that it is time to go to to the Service Club. The club where _she_ is, where I can see _her_. I look to the window of the Special Activities building, and in a window so far away and so high there is that sight makes my chest tighten even as a desire that should be long dead to me is rekindled. My only wish is to merely see her face and eyes from some close distance on the scale of a room, for she could never be my acquaintance nor friend, and it would be dishonorable in the extreme for my lowly pitiful self to even attempt any manner of communication again. Pink petals are blown through that open window, around shiny strands of long black hair coming into view at times, outlined in golden sunlight as they are lofted by gentle gusts. Those pieces of blossoms are fluttering over the ends of frail and extremely feminine delicate fingers seen for but a couple seconds as they rise over the window sill to slowly turn the page of a book. Hair I knew as Sabon scented, that in those school years would occasionally and by accident softly glide over the back of my shy hand when sitting close to its bearer at committee meetings and club writing projects. Fingers so dainty and yet powerful that back then would grab my sleeve or hem of my jacket when the owner scared or insecure or wanted my attention, fingers I once held in a hotel during a bizarre tryst of long philosophical discussions as we sought to recreate an atmosphere of two years of our shared past. An adrenaline burst energizes my body. She is there!

Running for the entrance, dismay grows along with that increasing grip behind my sternum at my discovery the building has no doors to be found! Faster I work my legs, propelling my body past ground floor windows behind which students are leaving rooms, and soon I am weaving and dodging my way around them as they are now filling the grounds on their way home. How are they leaving? Why can't I find that egress? I am at last turning the corner to the main entrance where the doors are closing, and I manage to slip though a gap not bigger than myself right before the metallic clunk of the latch. Down a long hall I have to zig and zag through a multitude, around a corner where Yui leans against a wall and yells "Hikki! Just a minute..." but I've no time for indulging that woman as I bound up the stairs to a sliding door beneath a sign full of stickers, heaving it aside to see…...a recently occupied room. The bits of pink sakura flowers twirl and land on an closed book which I know to be of western literature, with a protective book cover bearing a drawing of a cat. A petal lands inside a dainty teacup decorated with images of frolicking kittens, with just a couple millimeters of red tea at the bottom.

The one I seek is not there, and I turn and glance up and down the hall, I run and look along the crossover between buildings, down stairs to quickly check passageways in all possible directions, I dare not call her name aloud for that would violate a sacred promise and possibly create a bothersome stain on that which should never be sullied. Only to see, only to know, only to have assurance the Ice Cold Beauty of Sobu High, Snowden née Yukinoshita Yukino, is safe and still on a path she made with her own will six years ago, that was all I the need I had.

My frantic search is interrupted by the song of my alarm clock, jarring me awake to the present and to the world of the waken, a mournful sigh escapes me from the sadness and dashed expectation concentrated as a lump in my chest. Crap, I've had that particular kind of dream, another one of those damned hated dreams, that has come around to haunt me about every other month for over five years. A dream that comes from an untamed and foolish part of my brain that refused to learn or believe that making a construction of naught but unfulfilled wishes, rising a puny distance over a ground toward an objective that lay at interstellar scale, was ever only folly and waste of the soul's energy. My subconscious was the remains a comet of grimy dirty ice, forever damaged by twice orbiting far too close to the inferno of a star-goddess of blue diamond, that creature of cold light that seared all in proximity.

Holding my iPhone that is presently in suspended animation, I mentally brace myself with the dread of the unplugging of the dike to let the torrent of the worlds cares and troubles and demands invade my precious sanctum. The phone is activated, and messages are sucked from the ether into its hungry vacuum.

_Hikigaya don't forget the appetizer soup tonight._

_Hikigaya, I know you're awake now._

_Hikigaya, are you ignoring me?_

_Hikigaya, you ARE ignoring me!_

_Dr. Hikigaya Hachiman! I know you're reading these messages!_

So very scary, does her husband get this treatment too? But Satoshi-san somehow manages to defuse any mounting anger of hers with a smile and gentle words before the point where she launches one of her attacks for which some of us have thus far failed to invent counter or dodge. Hiratsuka-sensei's quickness and strength also were honed to even greater sharpness in recent years since she quit smoking and put herself to a regimen of hard exercise and further martial arts instruction to "remain young", and indeed she at least remained quite shapely and her well developed chest muscles keep certain assets high and on a prominent display so rare in a 41 year old female. You are one lucky bastard, Satoshi-san! Were I ten years older, it could have been me kneading those…..OK, just slam the brakes on that Hayajiro Kotetsujo, Hachiman, before the Kabane of Horniness ahead bite you and make you theirs!

Guilt and regret of one ex-Christmas cake led her with kind and supportive spouse to reinsert herself into the lives of those once under her care as school counselor. After "the affair" Sensei and her husband Satoshi-san often had me and other Sobu alumni over for dinner "pot-luck style" to use British phrase, or had us all meet at ramen (usually) and other types (occasionally) of restaurants so she could needle, wheedle, nudge, poke us into her vision of a better life, with our consent and agreement of course. My past self would have asserted that allowing ones self to be changed by another was just a form of running away from ones true self, and yes I still maintain that to be true. However, as long as I choose a path newly revealed from another person as looking promising enough to me to attempt passage, then I can accept my turning onto a new way.

My teenage self would also say any phase of school, grammar or middle or high, would cause resets of relationships with them banished to the ash can of past regret. And this was provably true, as those of my high school years did indeed evaporate within half a decade of graduation. And this was provably false, as Hiratsuka Shizuka and certain others had scooped up the dust of my cast off history, potted it, poured water and fertilizer upon it, and so some of my past friendships and acquaintanceships were as a phoenix reborn. I am of a Zen mind of this, cursing and giving thanks, can I claim as my invention cursed thanks and thankful curses?

In no small part due to her pressures and occasional kicks to the hind side over the last five and a half year, I now held a PhD in Japanese literature, and so augmented my freelance writing efforts with the position of a professor. A key difference from my struggle from dismal bachelor degree being I had friends and acquaintances to study with and discuss things. The success of certain light novels of mine, the first of which had assistance of industry insider connections from my friends, provided most the fuel for a master's degree, and teaching assistant work and then actual staff position came later. Yes, Japan though infamous for mostly having advanced degrees in the technical fields, also had colleges where the humanities turned out men and women of letters. And so I joined that very peculiar temple hierarchy known as "higher learning", to be a kind of priest though yes still very much a kind of corporate slave.

"Yes yes I'll see you and everybody tonight," I texted back to Hiratsuka Shizuka, hopefully to avert the building pressure on the local tectonic plates.

The potluck dinner at Sensei's house meant I should make a list for shopping after my series of lectures today, besides a more basic and masculine a stock of ingredients for the next few days as I'd only be cooking for myself instead of for two. Which brings up the matter of another person who has applied forces over five years and pushed aside branches revealing a path to induce an unbelievable change almost a year ago.

My study and professorship of Japanese writings and related ancient histories really was an extension and indeed amplifier of my being an otaku, besides helping my serious writings the studies also made my light novels (ever a source of disdain and mockery from my more serious colleagues at the University) more rich and full (or it would seem their rising popularity would indicate). Indeed one could say those immature and juvenile portions of my mind, one of my favorite things about myself, being augmented by a complimentary career were wrong as expected. However, this other change, this bizarre "experiment" as its proposer dubbed it, is still a source of doubt and confusion. For yes I had love for this person even during high school, and she was always important to me, though both us know there was and will ever be one higher tier reserved in my heart, for an incomparable unobtainable other woman.

Weights of voluptuous yielding mounds of femininity rest on my right arm, right torso and right leg, and they extended grapplers, like a ship from Outlaw Star, that were locked firmly onto my left side. Instantly making me feel guilt from dreaming of another woman less than twenty minutes ago, but still those sensations also swept the negative emotions away. Unbelievable I know for Hikigaya Hachiman to be found so entrapped by a creature of the opposing sex, but a kind of "experiment" was proposed by a certain significant person from my past and accepted with some amount of reservation by myself; at the ripe old age of 32 I've been in an intimate relationship with someone from my youth who reappeared in my life after her first taking a journey through heartbreak and abuse from two boyfriends in her adult years. My vows of loner-ism and chastity finally were torn down by a combination of Komachi's conniving and insistence, and a certain scatter-brained but ever warm hearted and loving ball of unfiltered child-like emotions who undoubtedly was thrown onto me again by the RomCom gods (acting through their faithful minion my Imouto) after their failed first attempt a decade and a half ago. But she too had to face the realities of her adult responsibilities and PR job today, and so rubbing her back and shoulders to pry her from the depths of slumber I finally was able to make her stir.

The grapplers pulled at my starship hull, er no that is to say a hug was given me with a right arm and calf, and a face lit up with happiness and joy popped up into my view of the ceiling. A deep kiss tasting of strawberries and honey filled my mouth, giver caring not for my concern of my own morning breath which I imagined as the distilled essence of the ashes of a Max Coffee factory razed by arson mixed with sludge from remaining firehose water.

"Good morning, Hikki!" said Yui. "Let me give you something so you'll think of your Yui when she's away for a few days!"

And so she moved her head down to my waist as I turned off my phone with its growing stack of textings, and she gave me a very intimate gift of pleasure while I ran my fingers through her hair and caressed her face. Oh how the tall and mighty loner redwood has finally been toppled by years and years of patient axe swings, to be rendered into firewood for the hearth of love!

* * *

"My special little pocket" of Chiba was sick, that was how I thought of those few blocks of my happy place of the past decade and more, they include the three stores that pandered to otaku and the couple of cafes that loved book readers. Graffiti had come over the past two years, along with steel cages added that shuttered the windows at night and criminal happenings in the news that angered me. Very worst of all was the interactions I sometimes observed between shop owners and adult bullies of the variety we call "Yakuza".

I approached a shop specializing in used hard-to-find older manga and light novels, seeing in front of it a city truck replacing for at least the third time a broken street light, and something in the corner of my eye brought me to a halt. Though the windows were mostly a mirror to the street, still I could see down the center aisle two shady and very dangerous looking men. Because of the bright lights in the back, I saw they were leaning close to the face of the old bald shopkeeper, one from each side, making him quiver as he looked at his feet and made slight movements with his mouth. With a start I realized the two goons had turned in my direction, coming down the aisle toward the exit, and I hurriedly pretended to be continuing to walk by the store disinterested in my surroundings. Stealth Hikki mode activated! Behind me I heard the lowlife exit my favorite used book store and tromp with purposed and brisk footfall to a stationery store (that Komachi used to adore) across the street , and they went inside to no doubt harass another owner.

A familiar silhouette approached me, that of a powerful and stocky (thanks to the exercise program his former high school counselor had years ago prodded him to start) and portly (thanks to his still enormous appetite) otaku man. I don't know him! Even if I actually knew him, I don't know him! Even if we often run into each other after work right here to go have ramen together after shopping together, I don't know him!

"Hachiman! Ho-ho-ho, we kindred spirits meet again on this the hallowed piece of our forefather's land, drawn by our quest for knowledge of worlds and dimensions beyond our own!"

Seriously Zaimokuza Yoshiteru, just quit that already, we're grown men in our 30s and don't need to be yelling chuuni-talk in the public eye and ear. I'm a professor of the hand recorded stories and pasts of an infinitely adaptable and ever philosophical people, while you're employed by the Ministry of Justice and assistant to a prominent and rising kensatsu-kan (public prosecutor). That job by the way was partly thanks to Sensei's loving whip lashes over the last five years and to her connections via other former students, with a small dash of her guilt over pithy replies on Yoshiteru's submitted career plan forms way back when.

"Zaimokuza, can we at least agree you not reveal your true chuuni and otaku power levels to the commoners?" I replied in a subdued voice, making him return his trademark exaggerated chuckle lifted right from an anime soundtrack. But suddenly his face became quiet serious, and he stepped close and spoke in uncharacteristic hushed tones.

"Hachiman, there is something peculiar afoot in this our beloved holy place. Those two loathsome minions of darkness that passed behind you may lead us to unmask the fell demon that invades and bewitches our revered place!"

"Oh no, Zaimokuza, I definitely do not want to be led to any demon. And I definitely don't think we should be prying the masks off of invading demons, and since when did you become something other than a cowardly overworked bureaucrat salaryman?"

Well other than when you amazed us and married that meek yet enthusiastic slightly older woman with the gift of comforting leadership of our mutual school past. That ball and chain was forged as penance for your enthusiasm making just a few too many of her projects successful over the year: stuco ones in the long past and charity ones in the present.

"My comrade-in-arms, we need not perform any deeds of heroism or grandeur this day, but rather we only need reconnoiter at a safe and prudent distance. And thereby perhaps acquire a bit of intelligence useful to my employers before shopping for our lady master's gathering tonight."

Behind him the two gangster-types had exited the stationery store and instead of staying on the sidewalk had passed between a gap between buildings to the alley.

"All right Zaimokuza, I'll indulge your whim for a bit, so long as there is no trouble for us, and by us I mean me and myself!"

"That's the spirit, Sir Hachiman, you make me proud to call you brother-in-arms."

"My arms and your arms are for toiling for long hours on a keyboard only, and let that truth ever remain so."

We near-jogged to the alley and peered round the corner, him down low and me leaning over him with our hands on the sides of a boarded and closed store, to see the pair yet again go between a space between buildings to the next street. Again Yoshiteru and myself assumed the same position to watch the Yakuza foot soldiers repeat the process of entering a cleft mid-block that led to another alleyway. Hurrying to the entrance of that alley, our childish peek-a-boo antics finally had a return on investment. A beyond-merely-expensive limousine garishly out of place and character for any local gang leader was idling there, and the driver's window came down. And even at that distance of some eighty meters I had recognition and gasped.

That man was known to me! In my high school days I mentally called him "the Harbinger of Doom" in my mind, he was "that other driver" of the Yukinoshita's. Not the kind hearted and apologetic Tsuzuki-san that accidentally hit me while I was cradling Yui's dog, who usually had Haruno and Yukino as passengers.

No it was the one that was tasked with the shuttling of The Most Terrifying Yukinoshita Woman, i.e. Yukino's manipulative mother. His bulldog like jutting jaw and lumpy nose looking like it had been badly repaired more than once were unmistakable even at half a block's distance. Long ago there was an apology from Yukino for her mother making us all uncomfortable after a school event, Yui and I tried to put her at ease with small talk minimizing the situation. I vaguely remembered Yukino once mentioning this driver's military background while scoffing at my nickname for him. Several times during high school Yukino's mother had appeared, always let out of the limo by that man, to either berate or scold Yukino, leaving my poor club president gloomy and dismal for hours.

"I know that driver! He drove Yukino's mother around in our high school days!" I hissed into Zaimokuza's ear. Of course, there was no way whomever owned that limo, even if evil and into organized crime, would stoop to waste time with petty local street thuggery and harassing of small shop keepers, there was obviously something much bigger going on.

My rather better than average eyesight was puzzling my brain with an oddity about that car, the license plate seemed to have the components of the usual numerals and letters of a government-issued one, yet were not resolvable into any coherent set of symbols. It was as if a piece of pattern disruption camouflage were instead mounted there.

We saw the driver turn and speak with a passenger far behind him, shrouded in the darkness of that ridiculously long and wide rolling fortress. Zaimokuza made a sharp intake of breath in reaction to the simulated shutter-click of a cell phone camera, that sound was a retaliation of our lawmakers upon perverts' upskirt and downshirt photos.

"I was about to do the same!" said Zaimokuza in shaky breaths as I pocketed my iPhone. Belying his words, he looked more about to wet himself than engage in amateur small-format digital photography.

The window of the limousine started to close.

"Hachiman, let us retreat!" and my large framed friend had not even finished that much welcomed outburst before we were both beating feet back to the shop that was our original destination as the limo went into gear and began to roll, us fleeing back to the realm of a couple of too-old otaku indulging their shameful hobby on the sly.

The shop was half-empty, always the shelves were full in my fond memories but now it was apparent the sickness was taking a toll.

"Excuse me, young men, could I have a word with you both?" the shopkeeper's tired elderly voice interrupted Zaimokuza and my treasure hunt amidst remaining volumes.

After we came to him he bowed to us, and we instinctively returned that bow going even lower per our training from youth that is the common Japanese heritage.

"I am deeply grateful for your being such great customers of mine over the years. I would be thankful if perchance you young fellows would consider visiting the new store I'll be opening with my grandson in two weeks," he said while reaching into his pocket and giving us each a card. "I'm afraid I have to close my store here, for the neighborhood is changing in a way that is not good for my family and business."

The door opened and a woman came in, and she poked her red glasses higher on her nose. A BL seeking missile incoming! Deploy chaff! Her face morphed into an evil deviant rotten-girl grin, and I feared the inevitable wild ideas of imagined boy-love about to be proclaimed.

"Oh ho ho ho! At last Hachiman X Yoshiteru have come from the closet, finally unveiling their loving bond to the world!"

"We haven't been in any closet, Tobe Hina-san, and please stop manufacturing unsavory back stories!" I retorted, attempting to close the subject and sit on the lid.

Yes, Tobe had finally caught his bashful (in matters of heterosexual romance only) and fearful (of heterosexual couplings only) Ebina Hina, but though married Tobe Hina remained a fujoshi through and though.

"Welcome Hina-chan, could you please come here and listen to a request of mine?" asked the shopkeeper.

We all solemnly promised him we would certainly be customers of his and his grandson's new store, paid for our selections, and left after looking around and taking photos with sad nostalgia at the place that brought us so much happiness since middle school age. Hina and spouse Tobe-san also would be joining us for potluck at Sensei's, so we all three went shopping together.

* * *

I stand inside a halfway, one based on a certain one of my secondary school's, but rendered in the reflections of parallel mirrors, such that it extends on and on with multiplied depth in front and behind me. But nearly to the vanishing point there is for a fraction of a second a perfectly formed long leg, sheathed in dark stocking having a white stripe nearly at the top, a stripe intended to accentuate that bit of bare soft thigh exposed between skirt hem and stocking top though its wearer would dismiss any such viewpoint as belonging to a lewd mind of the baser sort. The leg and the ends of trailing black hair disappear into a doorway. I run and run down the hall, past an impossible count of vacant rooms, finally after many minutes arriving at a sliding door under a sign bearing silly kid's stickers. I slide the door before my body even halts, and propel myself into the club room. A teapot stands next to a full cup with a pan-san motif ("just a paper cup replacement", she had said) at the near end of the table, that end that was my reading place for two years. The window is open and cherry blossoms drift in and settle on some books wrapped with cat themed book covers. A feeling of loss and sorrow starts to overwhelm me. I awaken to my alarm clock's song, my mind melancholy and pensive.

* * *

"Why are you treating me to an overpriced Western lunch practically in the Yukinoshita's corporate back yard? Heck they probably own this place too!" I complained to Zaimokuza.

We sat in a second story restaurant geared to corporate salarymen much above our pay grade, overlooking the plaza of Papa Yukinoshita-san's corporate headquarters, on a Wednesday when I had no classes though I should have been reviewing student's papers and constructing an exam or three. A skyscraper with blue mirrors for windows was in the rear for the foundation business, the construction company. Another angled on my left having mirrors of gold for a wall, was for subsidiaries in real estate and property management and property investment, and I didn't even know what happened in the other reddish-purple windowed building, that together with its siblings formed a kind of letter 'Y' if viewed from the air, though that later one was often in the background when Diet Councilor Yukinoshita-san spoke in the news.

"We await a view of the visage of a certain driver in the mirrored windows" replied Zaimokuza with his mouth around a grilled club sandwich. Soon a limo, very likely that limousine we saw two days before, drove up and into the covered turnabout and stopped in front of the golden skyscraper. Since the cover was a good two floors above our second story level, we had a clear view of the driver reflected in gold, The Harbinger, as he stepped out and walked to the rear doors.

"That driver is our mark?" asked Zaimokuza.

"Yes that's the same driver from before, though please let's not speak like mafioso planning a hit in a B movie", I informed my friend as I snapped a picture with my iPhone.

A graceful woman grabbed The Harbinger's hand and lifted herself out, it was The Scariest Yukinoshita Woman, Yukino's mother. Another man followed as I snapped another picture, and immediately I made a rude gulping sound and dropped my phone onto the plushly carpeted floor. It was without mistake the only man ever to punch me in the face, James Snowden! None other than Yukino's foreign born (failed-)embezzler husband! He bowed to Yuki-mom, and started his way away along the turnabout. Coming to the end, he crossed the street to our building, making my half full stomach start to feel extremely ill at ease and sorry for most the turkey-avacado-goat-cheese-spouts "california style" sandwich I had consumed. Surely he wouldn't be coming here to grab a bite? Curse the gods of RomCom (Post-Affairs Department)!

Three minutes later I hyperventilated "Shit shit shit, he's coming out of the lift behind you" to Zaimokuza, who only gave me a confused stare.

I grabbed a drink menu, mumbling "I just want to see the absurd prices" to Yoshiteru before cranking Stealth Hikki Mode to maximum deflective power. A smell I remembered all too well, that of filthy lucre distilled into fine cologne, started to permeate the air. I intently studied the cocktail menu like a student at 3am before finals, waiting for that smell to dissipate. The smell did not, it stayed at the same level for far too long a chunk of a minute, and to my immense dismay from a source far far too close.

"That ahoge! I knew it! It IS you!" growled a voice from a face centimeters above the top of my menu, that face that would be at home on a movie star and set most women's hearts a-fluttering away. Only one thing for a cornered man to do in a situation like this, play dumber than dumb!

"Excuse me sir, do I know you? " I inquired in a timid and oh so non-threatening a mouse voice.

"Hikigaya Hachiman, you will never ever come within a kilometer of here again, or I will have Yukinoshita's security detail make you disappear!" he bellowed, making all the patrons and waiter and head waiter look disgustedly in our direction, and making Zaimokuza in particular slouch deep into his seat and stare at his belly with features gone totally limp.

Then Snowden seemed to deflate a bit, and added in a voice of disappointment, "Now look what you've done, Hikigaya, I've completely lost my appetite."

He turn, sighed, and exited via the lift.

Zaimokuza and I then remembered the particular ability of breathing we had been performing since our expulsion from our mothers' respective wombs 32 years prior, and we panted like dogs. The head waiter came by for the check and also kindly requested that we should consider not ever returning to that establishment.


	2. Spy Games

I had given Zaimokuza a kind of whitewashed four sentence summary of why one James Snowden, husband of our former schoolmate Yukino, utterly and completely despised my guts. Words along the lines of my meeting Yukino soon after our class reunion five years ago, maybe spending a little too much time with her to discuss what we were doing and to banter much the same as we did in the Service Club days. Zaimokuza had nodded knowing and understanding my meaning having been present many times himself for those verbal spars and volleys; indeed some days he was the subject and cause for them, and many times received collateral damage.

Even so Zaimokuza also was grateful to the Service Club president for the time she spent reading his pulp trash and listening to his delusional future plans, and for the suggestions she had all of us all give him. Also he was ever thankful to be included in some of our activities like festival planning and parties and karaoke outings. Anyway I said there was a misunderstanding about those times Yukino and I had spent talking, some people had the completely wrong idea about taboo things that didn't happen and never could happen, and rumors had ended with her husband punching me in the face, telling me to never appear again in his sight, and my promising Yukino not to bother her any more. Zaimokuza's curiosity being apparently satiated, he then wondered if I would be so helpful to his employer as to send copies of photos I had taken to an official e-mail address. And I complied out of two reasons: my hatred and jealousy of James Snowden, and my fear that events that might be a threat to Yukino were being set in motion.

Woman have terrifying capabilities, one of them is the All Girls Network which is much like the Misaka Network but it goes beyond cloned sisters. The AGN has far more than 20,000 members and no Last Order sysadmin, and which focuses on misdeeds of women always and sometimes fixates its sensory array on the perceived misbehavior of men. Said men then become judged scum of the earth by all women. The All Girls Network, Fear it! Avoid it! Beware lest its Eye of Sauron turn its gaze onto your poor soul, and being nought it its sight, ye be reduced to dust and quite confounded be!

Yui had for years never spoken of Yukino, though I knew they are still in contact. I once glanced at a messaged photo on Yui's phone, the picture of a angelic little girl with knee length brown hair and Yukino's beaming face above. I myself do not speak of Yukino to Yui, for as she is my girlfriend I don't wish to dredge up unpleasant recollections and upset her with reminiscing about the one woman in my past that had a hold on my heart. The one woman outside of my totally pure and familial heart's love for my dear imouto Komachi, to be clear.

Soon upon my return home, my phone rang with Yui's ringtone.

"Hikki, I just got a strange call from Yukinon. She said her husband was upset to see you. That you were in a restaurant across from her father's buildings."

Level 1 Alert! Angel Sighted over the Geofront! The All Girls Network had received stimulus and was wondering whether to initiate **Impact** upon a certain dark cynical ahoge'd philosopher.

I wondered if I should tell the whole truth, but then thought that the root of this matter was observing some seedy and dangerous looking men very likely up to no good. Putting Yui in danger was unforgivable, so too was prematurely making trouble for Yukino through Yui if she didn't need to be involved. Of course, just the fact that in the past two days the words "Yukinoshita" and "Yukino" had been uttered by me, and by Zaimokuza, and Yui, was unsettling in itself. Those words, those people, should have stayed buried in a past full of regret, and not part of the present.

"Yui, I was just having lunch with Zaimokuza, he works a few blocks from there and I couldn't pass up a chance for free food."

"Oh! You were with Chuuni?"

"Yes, and I most certainly didn't expect Yukino's husband to walk in and start yelling at me to not return to that part of the city. Poor Zaimokuza can never eat at that restaurant again!"

One time I had gone drinking with Yui, and I had told to Yui the aftermath of "the affair" at the Snowden mansion, of Yukino getting the best of her husband along with my riling up James Snowden and getting a fist in my face for my troubles. So Yui knew there was forever bad blood between Snowden and myself, and that both Snowdens' intended never to see me again. As aside, I will not take up drinking as a hobby, I value the use of my brain for work and for recreation, and prefer it to be unscrambled. For more negative points Yui drunk and within arms reach of the man she loves leads to near pornographic incidents in public bars, so we both mostly abstain from alcohol drinking together and have other shared interests like movies, karaoke, and picnics with cooking as Yui actually and finally is beyond the basics of not incinerating food nor synthesizing biowarfare reagents.

"Hahaha, that's so Hikki a story! I'm sorry I was starting to get upset over nothing, Hikki."

"Oy, don't use that silly nickname you invented for me to also be an adjective for public humiliation."

"I love you, Hikki."

"I love you too, Yui", I truthfully replied. "Please come home soon and satiate all my carnal desires with your nubile body."

"Pervert! Deviant! Molester!", yelled Yui a little too loudly into my ear, and then she laughed.

After folding, spindling and mutilating stacks of paperwork for my daytime corporate slave job (virtually, on the computer), and ruing the lunchtime plus travel at Zaimokuza's insistence leaving no time for my true passion of writing, I instead turned on the TV to wind down for the day as my girlfriend was going to be away a few more days leaving lesser forms of pleasure the only choices. This was in keeping of my promise to Yui to abstain from viewing erotic material and from self-pleasuring so that our reunions could be more joyful and..er..vigorous.

Verily the word for the week was Yukinoshita, for on the screen was upper diet house member Yukinoshita-san in front of a model of some tall buildings, and a small picture of an abandoned slum in the background to his right. Looking at least twelve years less than his late fifties age, muscled and fit, he was the embodiment of the successful business man and politician, holding the trust of the people.

"Yukinoshita Construction Corporation will renovate this area that has fallen into misfortune and lack of purpose, and will bring prosperity and jobs, business and homes, and will drive away the criminal elements that have plagued it. We have done this task successfully before many times, we will do it here."

After more inspiring words building faith in a vision of a grand future, there was a round of applause, and the camera zoomed out to show the large audience and also those on stage with Yukinoshita-san. I saw Yukino's mother with a slight smile, and next to her a very serious looking James Snowden among the staff of Yukinoshita-san. On the floor below the stage there was The Harbinger of Doom and a couple other security muscle wearing earphones and speaking into lapel microphones.

By "homes" he meant expensive high rise condominiums, of the sort his youngest daughter once occupied. And "jobs" were of the white collar big corporate variety. And "prosperity" for the upper percentile who already had wealth. Sure, there would be benefit that trickled down to the common man, especially compared to boarded and shuttered unused buildings of failed business and abandoned low-rent apartments.

So was that the fate of my "Special Little Pocket of Chiba"? To be first drained of its life's blood, then swallowed up by a Yukinoshita Construction Corporation development project, to fill the pockets of the rich. Yet that was ever the story of the world, the rich and powerful climbing high on the backs of the working, the poor, the struggling. Pushing them into the earth as the losers, while those of privilege ascended heavenward as the winners. That was the view of my youth, and it was the "stereotype true so often it was a working general description" of my life even now.

I switched off the TV and ruminated. Yukino was in high school very proud of her father, and would not tolerate anyone speaking disrespectfully even of their own father let alone hers. Her father was the one who consented to her having her own apartment, to be away from harrying by her sister and the manipulations of her mother. Though he was extremely busy and not often in communication with his family from the impressions I received, yet he at times doted on his youngest daughter. He won elections by negotiating and promising things to those that had opposed him, and delivering on those promises as an honorable man. Nothing in anything Yukino had ever said about her father would make me believe he would employ crime or its aftereffects to gain advantage over another human being. Of course, I have always and ever been wary of mental images that we build of another, those can come crashing down when the harsh winds of reality blow. And so my rather third-hand impressions of Yukino's father could be opposite the man in the flesh. However, I also knew there might be another person behind much or all the Yukinoshita's success, who used family as tools and used trauma, bullying and manipulation on family members. Who in fact cut-and-pasted her plans and schemes for her eldest daughter onto Yukino her youngest, nearly crushing her child in the process.

I found my breathing ragged and my fists clenched tight. Was any this all even my concern? Aren't I an unworthy boyfriend to be thinking of things with "Yuki" [authors note: snow] in them? Should I care if Yukino's husband might possibly be involved in unsavory activities under control of her mother?

My mind came to a stop, and I instead thought of my "Special Little Pocket of Chiba". That was just a four blocks square at the most if one included similar buildings outside of the ones that were always in my ken, smaller by far than the current project that was the subject of the news item. I went to my PC and looked up past Yukinoshita projects that replaced slums with big buildings. To roughly sum them up they were always at least a half kilometer by a kilometer or greater, a combination of condos plus business plus hotel and stores and recreation, a whole kit for the lifestyle of the upper middle class and beyond. At least another eight or more square blocks would need to be appended to the remains of my "Special Little Pocket of Chiba" to make room for a "Yukinoshita kit". And just a minute of enlightenment with GoogleEarth-san told me the obvious direction of blocks that would need a vacating.

After my 3PM lecture the next day I closed the door of my office and changed into extremely casual and worn clothing like my most delinquent students might wear on their day off. A faded Chiba Lotte Marines baseball cap completed my ensemble. I had to twice tell Yui not to throw away that cap, nor use my old yet prized t-shirts for coloring her hair. A man's treasure is a woman's junk and rags...

Placing ear bud and a lapel mike on my clothes, plugging them into my phone, I started a bluetooth walkie-talkie type app.

I then spoke to my spotter, "8-Ball moving out. ETA 25 minutes".

I had reluctantly agreed to Zaimokuza's delusional fantasies of being recon team in an epic war, also to treating him to ramen tonight. The pain and suffering known only to the one who came up with the plan….

"Shogun Ashikaga, moving out, ETA 20 minutes," came the reply in my ear. The free app worked together with my iPhone and Zaimokuza's Android versions playing together nicely. This brought up a rather fond memory of my and Zaimokuza's using internet social media for fishing of a certain school election nomination to solve a request to the club. No muscle bond criminal lackeys were a possible risk then, though.

We soon acquired and were watching with binoculars a surveying team, myself perched on the rusty stairs ascending the side of an abandoned wooden warehouse, next to a dirty window, and popping open a can of MAX Coffee. That team was plying their trade among storage warehouses mostly unnoticed by the workers of the few that were open.

"8-Ball! An unknown limousine is approaching us from the northeast! It's stopping on the Route 34 hill a half kilometer to my north".

I couldn't see that car, which by "unknown" meant not the one we knew, from my stairway on the opposite side of the building. Were the windows not so dirty I could have looked through the building. Hopefully we weren't outflanked by hostiles.

"Good Lord, 8-Ball, it's the Sobu Service Club president and a little girl next to her holding a biquad yagi!"

That certainly brought all my senses to a hyper alert state. Yukino was here?! In fact it took me a minute to realize I didn't understand the last part of his sentence.

"Shogun, what in the hell is a 'biquad yagi'?" I inquired. Fifteen years plus and still my high school mates always rubbed my nose in my total lack of attention to science track materials. Well mostly Yukino did that.

"8-Ball, Remember the old TV antenna that used to be on roofs of houses?"

"Yeah Shogun A., but how could a little girl hold a big spiky thing like that?"

"8-Ball, this is a tiny version, for wifi or bluetooth type frequencies. Oh! the Harbinger-limo is approaching the surveying team from the north!"

The limousine we knew pulled up, and the Harbinger of Doom opened the rear and let out one ex-Yukino-embezzler, aka Yukino's husband. Snowden gave a set of papers to the surveying team, took a report from them, and then returned to the car which headed off. All was captured on my iPhone's camera even though my head was almost dizzy with the revelation Yukino was here, maybe even with her daughter I had seen as a prenatal bulge near Haruno's grave five years prior.

"8-Ball, I'm a bit concerned that biquad yagi has been pointing in your direction for some time now, I think it best we…."

A laughter of a sort that was always mature beyond its years, arrogant yet kind, always recognizable to me over time and space, reduced Zaimokuza's voice in my ear piece to static as it dominated the comm channel.

"Idiot. Nincompoop. 8-Ball!" said a giggling voice, soothing yet asserting superiority even as it enjoyed levity.

"I didn't expect you to be here," was the only thing I could manage.

"Well, I am. And I am trying to decipher a mystery. That mystery also seems to have a rotten eyed doctor of literature just beyond the edge of it, playing children's spy games with his fellow chuunibyou infested friend. For your future reference, I would suggest using a method of communication a little more secure."

"Hello, only my friend has the chuunibyou infestation, I am merely pandering to obtain his cooperation, and that also includes my buying him ramen. I'm totally the victim here! And just because you broke into our comm channel doesn't mean most people could."

More of that laughter of an amused goddess I had for years craved to hear filled my ear. "Your excuses for engaging in playtime are amusing, Hiki-kiddy-kun. And I have not 'broken into' your so-called 'comm channel', rather a little girl who once caused you to blame me in a cemetery for overeating did. Good day, Dr. 8-Ball."

The presence next to my head had gone. Had I really been conversing with her?

"8-Ball, limo one is leaving the area. Let's go get ramen," my chuunibyou infested friend said.

"Roger that, Shogun Ashikaga," I said, totally drained and out of Max Coffee.


	3. Attachment

People who care about each other hurt each other, Sensei had once told me. The topic of that conversation was Yukino's shell; in truth I was not the most broken person in the Service Club. One could even say I was partially fixed to a degree at the time, in having friends and acquaintances due to the Service Club, even though repairs to the machine quickly fell apart when the context for those relationships went away, though in hindsight it was because I was ever so self-absorbed that I did not properly value things which are important to most. Now finding myself having relationships again, thanks to Sensei's regrets for her past handling of certain students after The Affair (no sex), and thanks to Komachi being an opportunist pouncing on fallout of The Affair (we understand, no sex right?), I also bear the burden of hurting those people either by actions or inactions. And sometimes the choice is only of how to hurt the one for which I care. Sitting at home after that bizarre escapade with Zaimokuza, my mind kept cycling between scenarios; one of my 108 flaws being over-analyzing consequences with relationships when I stand at a fork in path of life.

Yukino had broken a significant agreement we had made after The Affair (only held her hand and talked, OK? Yes shameful of me to do that with married woman). She had today spoken with me, although it was just a shadow of the banter we enjoyed long ago. But therein lay the problem, that was something we both enjoyed immensely, then and hours ago. And it was something Yui would hate. Yui would be hurt deeply knowing it happened, or hurt deeply finding out later (perhaps from Yukino herself) that it had happened but I had hid the thing. Yui knew full well the special place reserved in my heart's deepest and most inner sanctum for one and only one woman. She claimed to have accepted that, and wanted a relationship anyway so I could learn the process of what is commonly called "moving on", not to mention the process of "having an intimate steady girlfriend" (note, lots of sex).

Damned if I do, damned if I don't, eh? Well two of the heavy weights that get affixed to a person by a relationship are expectations of trust and honesty. They are included as factory standard equipment, no need to click any check boxes on the order form. Yui deserved to be hurt by the choice of openness, the better choice. Relating in person to Yui would be preferable to phone call, but delay only let the worser choice become more probable, and for greater pain to given.

"Yui, I had a very strange adventure today."

"What's wrong, Hikki, did something bad happen?"

"That place I go to get older light novels and manga, where Zaimokuza and Tobe Hina also shop, that whole neighborhood is getting torn down to make new buildings worth lots of money."

"That's too bad Hikki, but you can find other stores right?"

"But it seems a lot of other neighborhoods have been torn down the same way, by the same people who maybe were not doing things the legal way. Zaimokuza and I wanted to find out who was doing it, and so we did some spying."

"Hikki! That could be dangerous! Why go looking for trouble?"

"Well we found out Yukinoshita Construction Corp was involved, and yesterday while we were spying on people surveying some city blocks right next to where are favorite stores are, a very weird thing happened that shocked us."

"Yukinon's father's business?….", she paused for several seconds and then gave a very sad and mournful sigh. "What weird thing happened, Hikki?"

"Zaimokuza and I were talking to each other using an app on our cell phones that were like a soldier's walkie talkie, and all of a sudden Yukino started talking to me from that app!"

"Yukinon?!..." Yui had started to breath with effort..."Hikki, what did she say to you? …..What did you say?"

"She only mocked Zaimokuza and I for playing like children, and wondered why we were there as she was spying on the same scene as us. Saying she wished to unravel a mystery, but was surprised to see us also spying. That was all, though the one other detail is that Zaimokuza saw her in the distance, with a little girl holding a radio antenna. Probably her daughter I would guess."

"… I'll ask Yukinon about this…...but Hikki, it really hurts. I don't like to hear that you were talking with Yukinon. I thought you two were never going to speak again, right? That's what you two agreed to that time, right?" Yui was sniffing loudly, I knew she was trying not to fully cry.

"Yui, I didn't go looking for her, and I wasn't at all expecting to talk with her. She was the one who broke the agreement I suppose, though we really didn't say much. I'm sorry this happened and I know it was going to hurt your feelings to tell you."

"Oh Hikki, you were happy to hear from Yukinon, weren't you?" Yui had started to cry softly.

"I won't lie and say it wasn't good to hear her voice and to know she was well. But I'm not seeking to be with her. Yui, you are the one I chose to be with and the unexpected incident today doesn't change that. And there is no more need for me to pry into matters any more, I'll not do anything else about it."

Yui sighed again, though I was glad to hear she wasn't crying any more.

"I want to be home with you."

"I'm waiting for you."

Later that week Yui came back, and we had an ...enthusiastic reunion. After work the next day, she wanted to talk about the very sensitive topic.

"I talked with Yukinon today. She said while her husband had at least been a good father and enjoyed being with his daughter for her first four years, that their marriage wasn't really working in any other way. She tried for her daughter's sake to satisfy her husband and be what she calls a complete wife. Since Yukinon took control of his money after….that thing that happened….he mostly did work for his father-in-laws company. But in the past year he was gone a lot, and Yukinon wondered if he was seeing women or trying to find money he could control. So she was tailing her husband, to see what he was up to. He's doing work for Yukinon's mother, it's like he's her personal assistant. He's getting paid for this outside the bank accounts Yukinon can see, and he also goes to casinos and clubs and...also hotels with reputations for…..getting services from women. Living the life of a rich playboy when he's not working, Yukinon said. She also apologized to me for speaking to you, she said she forgot herself seeing two grown men, Chuuni and you , acting like little kids with new toys and couldn't resist poking fun.

"Hikki, does this really have to affect us? Can't we just not worry about Yukinoshita problems and have our own life?"

"Yes Yui, that's exactly what we'll do. The Yukinoshitas can solve Yukinoshitas' problems themselves, outsiders poking their nose in will just bring troubles on themselves they don't need. And I'll tell Zaimokuza that we're done playing spies and recon soldiers, the two of us are back to just doing our otaku things and eating out and hanging out with our friends."

Yui snuggled up close to me on the couch, and put her head on my shoulder, "I'm so glad, Hikki."

And that was the end of it. Yui and I returned to our comfortable and peaceful life, enjoying each other's company and having in each other a refuge from our daily chores and duties and work. Yui was not the kind of person I could have deep discussions with about my musings, but rather she was someone who gave care and support and comfort, and who enjoyed simple activities with those dear to her. Lately she had been giving out hints of wanting something more permanent, also references to someday having children.

Marriage, "The Graveyard of Relationships", I had mocked that institution in my youth. But it was because of marriage I had a home with Komachi, and even though my parents doted on her rather than me, believing a son should best be toughened by less coddling, at least they left me to live my life my way as their own corporate lives they found to be soul-sucking, and paid for my schooling through my bachelor's degree. They had sacrificed a lot because of the love they had for me too. So I was at least considering the possibility of it not being the final grave of two people's bonds.

So we had contentment and happiness together, for a couple months anyway, until the national news carried a story that rocked the financial world. Yui had nearly set down two plates of Chinese stir-fry (simple but now within her skill set, and non-burnt and non-toxic) when the TV's words caused her to let them half drop, spilling some of the food on the table.

"The body of Snowden heir James Snowden, son in law of Diet Councilor Yukinoshita-san, was discovered in what remains of a limousine destroyed by what police are called a guerrilla warfare type Improvised Explosive Device, or IED."

A camera shot from a helicopter showed the rear two-thirds of a destroyed limousine in the alley between the backs of stores having windows and doors blown out, some of those near the limo charred black, and firemen putting equipment and hoses back into fire trucks.

"The driver of the limousine survived and is said to be in critical condition at an undisclosed hospital. The Yukinoshita family has not yet made any official statement about the matter."

"Police are seeking these two men as persons of interest. People are warned not to try to approach them, they are to be considered extremely dangerous."

Photos along with the names and former military rank of two men were given. I knew those faces very well, the thugs who had troubled my store's old bald shopkeeper.

Yui stood looking quite unhappy for a full minute. Oy!, You know your late dog Sable was better creature than that disgusting human male, and Yukino did not ever love her husband but only married for mutual business benefit for herself and family, why be upset? This was what was in my mind, but how very wrong I was about what Yui had divined in a millisecond.

"Yui, that's a horrible thing that's happened there, but even so remember we said such things weren't our problem", I reminded her as I walked to hug her, intending to reassure her I wouldn't go into some private eye or other investigative mode. "You can give Yukino whatever support she needs as her cherished friend, and I won't even ask you about your discussions with her, and I certainly will not try to contact her about this."

"But Hikki…...Yukinon…... isn't a married woman any more," Yui said with very small voice, so quiet I barely heard her. Her eyes began to water.

I was astonished at the quickness of the female mind when confronted with possibilities regarding romantic relationships after a tragedy, when the male mind is more focused on immediate and practical matters of body count and damages and whether it will incur personal loss. I should have replied sooner, should have given some comfort to what I very clearly understood Yui feared. But I was like a fish out of water, gasping for the element that gave me means to act or communicate.

"Available" the common word was, or unmarried, unattached. Yukino was in that condition. Stop being stupid, Hikigaya Hachiman, that is of no relevance to a lowly bug such as yourself. An un-single bug, let's be quite clear on that, with a loving girlfriend, you unworthy scum whose mind is wandering into the forbidden. Yukino will find a better man than the sleaze-ball intended for the deceased Haruno who just vanished in a well deserved fireball, will find a good family oriented man to be father to her young daughter, a giant among men who has power and wealth and prestige to further Yukino's goals and continue the construction of her financial empire worth eleven digits of yen. Yes, that's what will happen and it does not concern Hikigaya Hachiman nor his ever supportive bundle of warmth and love Yuigahama Yui.

Contrast that with the insults, scorn, arrogance of Yukinoshita Yukino (the name the deep part of my consciousness always had for her, without "Snowden"). Her inferiority complex disguised as a superiority one. Her manipulation and deception of her own self as her lifelong worst problem, of the truth that she was ever adrift being pushed by currents of expectations of others. Yes, she would do things for others, she had charities and a portion of her tech company devoted to that, but she never did a thing purely for herself. Who even would want to spend a day under the roof as a troublesome woman like that?

"You're thinking of Yukinon, aren't you Hikki? I always feel like I'm living in her shadow, that I'm just a poor substitute for what you really always wanted! You can never talk to me like you talked with her, we don't love the same things, we don't get happy from the same things! We never sync like you and Yukino always did from the first week you two met! I always was on the outside when you two talked, I couldn't even understand your words most of the time. Yet you two would stop after an hour of reading and suddenly go off on your journeys of words and ideas that would fly all over the universe while I could only look back and forth at the two of you arguing and teasing and joking and insulting, but always having a good time! And the worst part was when I kept telling Yukinon she seemed like she was flirting with you and that she really liked you, and she'd just laugh and say how you were just a pastime for someone such as her, that you were interesting only like a rare and grotesque insect for study, that it was impossible for someone like her to have any kind of meaningful relationship with a Hikigaya-bug or Hikigerm….or...or...," Yui's sobbing finally overtook her ability to speak for a time.

I myself remained speechless during this outburst of pent up insecurity, I of course couldn't deny what by now was my teen and adult life's obsession with Yukino, my yearning for Yukino, my minds constant return to Yukino.

Yes, I could honestly say I did have love for Yui, and that even in high school she was precious to me, but she was never the focal point of my mind, never the soul mate that in my maturity I realized even a person with loner tendencies could need. But, even so, all of Yui's worry and all of my inner turmoil really were just a waste of energy over the unobtainable and unreachable. Pointless and moronic.

"Yui, enough of that already," I finally managed to say, "you're getting all worked up about impossible things. I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not contacting Yukino. I chose to be with you, not anyone else. You're the only woman I've kissed, the one I lost my virginity to, the only one I've ever made love to. Let's enjoy the dinner you made."

We ate and made small talk, and made long love that night. Keep the straight and narrow, Hikigaya Hachiman, you already have far more than you deserve, that's what I sternly told myself.


	4. Break

_From RalphZiggy: You can skip to the next chapter below this stuff. I Took a few days off from my job, and am kicking this, my first story since childhood, off and into the fanfic dimension was one thing on the to-do list. I am grateful some people even are reading this, and so to reply, or more accurately give feeble pathetic excuses, to general criticisms:_

_" This doesn't have the tone of EOTA nor is it a continuation! " - it's a "time skip" that works from a few things hinted at in EOTA, and of course has the purpose of making me happier by having a more satisfactory Yukino and Hachiman relationship endpoint because EOTA wounded me. It is "sequel" only in the sense it comes later; Frog-kun was an impressionist painter but here we are making engineering drawings on a roll-fed plotter based on a couple of post-EOTA ass-pulls, sorry for disillusioning some of you. As aside I spent some years making engineering drawings on a roll-fed plotter, projects derived from ass-pull estimates, with the resultant sore ass._

_To EOTA ending I make the keister-pull of Hiratsuka putting forth extreme efforts borne of guilt to change Hachiman and Zaimokuza and others not mentioned, with a few heaping cupfuls of Komachi somehow aiding Yui into compelling Hachiman to at least give a relationship a try. Hachiman relents. Also 8man finally has a career and advanced degree as tiny help to plot. I don't feel the particular career part is out of character for him from canon hints, certainly it is further advanced than Freeter Hachiman of EOTA but Sensei's husband and Yui's PR firm had these industry connections you see and Time Skip ..._

_" Hachiman is out of character, doesn't seem like him at all " - I will claim he is a much older and PhD'd Hachiman, also right now he is off-balance, in no small part because of his situation with Yui. There are people back in his life putting forth effort to make him a somewhat social creature. This is not his default state, nor is being with Yui a natural one either. Let us we what cracks form and what breaks and if there is a loner-seeking homeostasis left under that ahoge. And sure too much of my own brand of cynicism rather than his is oozing out, sorry but I really am a total n00b._

_" Not like an OreGairu fanfic or story at all, what on earth? " OK think of it as a cross-over, crossed with goofiness inside my brain that is, mutant spawn unleashed on the community village with good intentions._

_" Mention of Tobe / Ebina Hina, what in tar-nation? " - Watari himself said he wished his publishers would someday let him write their tale. It's manifest destiny!_

_"So wordy and verbose you endlessly farting pretentious gas bag, do you enjoy books written in the era of a sentence per page, each one a shaky Rube Goldberg contraption haphazardly fastened together with commas and semicolons and dashes and parenthesis? " Why yes, yes I do. Did I mention I'm older than dirt? We had to bang rocks together when we needed dirt, and we had to hand carve those rocks first._

_" Zaimokuza has so prominent a role. And now married to Super Magic Comfort Girl? " - I believe some great bro possibilities with Hachiman and the Z, we have more of that in the LN than anime and I'm a huge fan of Chuuni. I also think Meguri a possible match, he was in canon some of the wind beneath her wings in a very indirect way though at time she seemed to have eyes for Hachiman. Well almost all girls had eye for Hachiman, nature of many the LN beast considering target demographic._

* * *

Humans always have the "social dominance structure and dog pack behavior" when forming groups or acting in groups. Whether in prisons for transgressors of laws, prisons for molding the minds of youth (schools), prisons for toil in exchange for money (businesses), prisons for lovers and their offspring (marriage and families) always hierarchies are formed and hierarchies assumed. A person is judged and treated according to their assigned role in the hierarchies. Sometimes with certain social coin a person can move a bit up, though the heights are reserved for the foreordained. At the pinnacle of our high school's hierarchies, the polar opposite of me of the shunned loner, was the perfect scholar, athlete, heart breaker, riajuu, pretty boy, Hayama Hayato.

There were yet some points of overlap of his circle of interests and mine, including but not limited to solving problems of various groups. In my case that was either for mandatory Service Club duties, or for my selfish desire of wanting a more peaceful atmosphere around myself, which Hayama also possessed. There was also the matter of Yukino, for him an alienated childhood friend and for me my daily nemesis or ally and foil and debate partner and taskmaster. He had always had a kind of jealousy of Yukino's attentions toward me, yet also a few times made reference to having an understanding of why it existed.

Yui was in both Hayama and Miura's (now his wife) circle of high school friends, it would happen naturally for Yui and unnaturally for me, that I would find myself dragged along on an outing with them at sundry times. The purpose of the present excursion was for "party favors and decorations" for a dread occasion, the fifteenth reunion of students (and teachers and spouses and children) of all classes of the year we graduated. Yui and Miura bounded like gazelles into a party-favor store to see in person the wares, ignoring my suggestion of putting full faith and trust in the zoom-able and rotate-able images of Amazon-san, leaving me behind with the blond mover and shaker of the world of real estate law and IP law and related, with his magazine-model perfect hair and smile and teeth and build. Also he wore a casual outfit that likely cost more than all my suits in sum. I'm not envious of you at all Hayama Hayato-san, by the way could you please just explode already?

Left behind by our women, Hayama transformed in front of me, he suddenly changed to looking worn out and weary. Certain people who wore masks and facades had no problem with removing them in my presence, and Hayama was one of them.

"There's a bar upstairs, Hikigaya, care to have a drink with me? They have a non-alcoholic drink I think you'll really like," proposed Hayama.

"Free drink? That's as good as free food, so I suppose I can endure having it with you present."

"So mean!" he chuckled.

The drink he spoke of was a parfait architected by the gods, a MAX Coffee Mudslide (hold the vodka) with layers of ice cream and whipped cream and Max Coffee and chocolate…... on second thought don't explode Hayama, I've newfound respect and admiration for you, you he-man among men! He himself ordered an extra-large cocktail, made of hard liquors with a mixer of harder liquor, and he quickly downed half of it.

"Oy! You're too big and muscular for me to drag you back to the car, and since when did you become a booze hound, Hayama?"

"Things really have been tense and very busy at work with the death of Yukino's husband. Investors are changing positions and parties are trying to modify contracts.

"Hey Hikigaya, are you still in contact with Yukino?"

"No, but Yui still is though."

"But Yui told Miura that Yukino hasn't replied for days to her."

"Maybe she's just laying low after what happened, to be safe," I speculated, though a bolt of foreboding and worry had hit me.

I told myself Yukinoshitas', Snowden and Yukino were not topics I wanted to dwell upon, but then Hayama is buying this parfait so I should at least be courteous and sit and listen. Though Hayama finished the cocktail and ordered another! Great, Hayama semi-drunk talk is now on the official schedule.

"Yui once told us, when we were drinking a bit together, that you and Yukino-chan had spent some time together five years ago discussing problems. That was right before she went missing then. My employees who work with Yukinoshita's say she is missing now, Hikigaya, and leaving important matters unattended. I was just wondering if you had maybe heard something."

I could only shake my head, "No I've not heard anything," which certainly was recently true if not absolutely so.

"My family isn't close to the Yukinoshita's as we once were. We still do legal work and project management for them, but the last dozen years have had misfortune change things."

"Ah, Haruno's tragic death," I quietly and somberly spoke.

Hayama then looked intently into my eyes, and I was uncomfortable knowing that the conversation would be going to very personal matters.

"Did you know, Hikigaya, during high school my family and the Yukinoshita's were planning me to be wed to Yukino-chan?

"But Yukino had a grudge against me. In middle school before she went overseas, that's when it happened. Before then she really liked me and we were close childhood friends. But girls were angry she was so perfect and pretty, and also they saw Yukino-chan and I sometimes dropped off or picked up from school together if our family stayed over or Haruno was babysitting us. They started bad rumors and bullied Yukino-chan. I tried to make her part of the center of my friends, to have her around and bring her along when my friends would do things. But that just made gossip worse, and one day while girls were shouting false and lewd accusations to us, Yukino-chan ran off crying saying I was an idiot. And...what was worse was my not wishing to further disturb my comfortable friendships. I let the situation be. She refused to speak to me after that, treated me the same way she treated all other boys, as annoying pests. Then she went overseas for school," rambled Hayama, a good percentage of his words slurred.

"I think that forever changed Yukino-chan. Her sister Haruno loved to toy and bully people for her own amusement and those closest received the worst and greatest amount of that treatment. Haruno was that way even though she also doted on and dearly loved her little sister.. Her mother never showed affection, and only ever used manipulation as motivation, and guilt as punishment. I was the one person who treated her well, who soothed her when she was sad, could make her smile and be happy. But then after that day she had no one. And even though Yukino-chan was distant from me I and probably hated me I…. I still had the hope that someday we'd be together again."

The Yukino I knew hated superficiality, hated masks, hated tolerating the gray areas or merely smoothing them over, hated siding with the majority over siding with justice….no Hayama she'd never willingly be with you. Of course, the Yukino I knew also was able to be pushed by duty and expectation, to be selfless even in the most valuable matter of her future, her biggest weakness. So it at one time was within his grasp for Hayama to be joined to the perfect goddess.

Hayama's words also made me think how Yukino and I had a youth and a mindset that was a product of trauma, and I had a random thought of coping versus cure and the pros and cons of each. A cure would imply a healer, an outsider.

"But then Haruno had the skiing accident, and Yukino-chan was made to be Snowden's wife and Haruno's replacement. The Yukinoshita's no longer visited my family for holidays. They only afterwards treated us as competent subcontractors, good enough for my family's continued income…..but my parents were changed. They no longer even cared or had plans for whom I would marry. I finally had some freedom for my own choices. That's when Miura came back into my life. Probably that was Yui's doing as she had stayed in touch with both of us. Miura has been a wonderful wife, so happy to be with me and you wouldn't believe how loving a mother. She doesn't care for me to speak of Yukino-chan though! Maybe Yui is the same with you about that topic."

"Ah, that's true enough. I don't ask Yui about Yukino and we don't speak of her," I replied. I was thinking Hayama too seemed to have a part of his brain that was forever left with a Yukino-shaped vacuum.

"You and Yukino-chan seemed to have something special together. Even Haruno thought you were good for Yukino-chan, and so tried to push you two closer together. Yukino-chan would not give another guy the time of day, but she watched out for you and had this fascination with you. You could make her smile, make her cheerful. Made me so jealous of you, Hiki-tani! How could you let close friendship with Yukino-chan slide away, Hiki-tani?" Hayama was talking fast and enunciating sloppily by this point.

Ah that misreading of my name that Yui's friends loved to use even though they all knew better. It was just a little joke now, they'd even now start using it at times without thinking.

We didn't "let it slide away", I was thinking, it is part of the life cycle of loners to have relationships reset and the one thing Yukino and I shared was our being loners. But that begged question of why she had returned and sought me out, and I knew part of the answer but she could never admit that horrible thing.

"Hikkio, did you get my Hayato drunk?!" scolded an annoyed Miura who appeared like a djinn behind Hayama, with a stone-faced Yui behind her carrying bags. Today was supposed to just be an order-placing day but some other shopping had clearly been done also.

"Er no, I had an ice cream but he ordered cocktails for himself," I deftly shifted all blame onto Hayama.

"So you two were taking about Yukinon?" Yui asked but with such lack of inflection it was barely a question.

"Hayama was just rambling, and I was listening since he is buying," I said with reassuring smile.

"I really don't understand why you'd be talking about that stuck up bitch of ice," said Miura with a 'hmmph!'. "Well I'm the one driving now, let's go everyone!"

An even more troublesome social obligation followed a couple days later, Yui was adamant I accompany her on an evening "dinner cruise" that was a reward from her employer, along with some other coworker friends. It was expected people would bring a spouse or significant other, and there were games and dancing and introductions and conversation. I tried, I really did for Yui's sake to be interesting and interested….but of course I was just trying to wear a mask and have a facade, I was in hell. My title at the University being dropped as if a token to higher status, to people that had no interest in such pursuits, that too was irksome. Yui looked so content and radiant, energized from interaction with a crowd of people, though at times she would look over at me with a look I knew of annoyance.

A week later Yui compelled me to go to a pop music festival with a few of her work friends. This festival had booths with food and games and contests that were all group activities, and I really wasn't part of her work group. Yui was animated and hyperactive, babbling away a mile a minute in small talk, while I was starting to get a headache from too much over-stimulation by things not in the least bit a concern to me. To make matters worse, a couple of her friends looked at acquaintances as sales prospects, trying to sell me insurance and vitamins, with implied potential of hurting their feelings if I wasn't in agreement with each of the steps of their sales pitches. How infuriating! Toward the end of the day Yui's face turned to me with consternation and I knew we were going to have an unpleasant talk when we arrived home.

"Hikki, why do you never want to do anything fun with new people? Can't anything different and new people give you joy, doesn't anything give you energy? Why must I always be the one to put in the effort, supply the energy? What's wrong with you, Hikki? And why do you always always go back to thinking about Yukinon and why were you talking with Hayama about Yukinon!?" she was shouting with tears flowing freely.

"There are things and situations I just don't enjoy Yui, I only see people trying to take advantage of another or avoiding really getting to know each other or asserting dominance over each other..."

"Why do you have to always think that way, Hikki! And...Yukinon hasn't texted me for days…. and….and...what about those plans we sometimes talk about.. Hikki when are we going to do something about….you know….getting married…?"

I truly felt sorry for Yui, knowing my basic abnormality and dark outlook finally had worn even a radiant joyful bundle of love and kindness and acceptance down. I carefully chose quiet word to try to comfort her, I truly wanted to make our relationship work. However if parts of me really made her this unhappy, if she was holding in pent up resentment that would boil over again and again…..that was wrong. And sealing those negative things into a bond of marriage would be even a greater sin and magnify the discontent.

"Yui, I really am so very glad to do things with you, to be with you. But yes I am a boring person who sees negative things and who is content to lead an overall boring life doing boring things. I'm not going to change, I'm not going to become a person full of energy and a person who leads another into exciting things in life. And yes I have always had this weird fascination and longing for Yukino, ever since the day I saw her work herself to exhaustion during the cultural festival. I can't change any of these things that cause you pain, Yui, it's part of my nature. If you find it too hard or too painful to be with me, maybe you should spend some time away thinking, and we'll be friends for a time instead of…...", even though the words had just left my mouth I too late knew that was precisely the wrong proposal.

"Idiot!", she screamed, and ran out the front door, leaving me to wonder if I could have handled the situation any better, yet knowing it was an inevitable end of a failed experiment. I stood there feeling loss, even as that vile part of my mind thought it just might be for the best.


	5. Need

Requisite for my obligations as an uncle was the provision of birthday presents for my niece and nephew, preferably of the kind loud and annoying to parents that would wind their little internal mental springs of excitability to the maximum, heh. Today I was at the home of Komachi and my brother in law, having already bestowed said offering and hearing my nephew at the other end of the house thoroughly enjoying his new treasure. Komachi and I sat at the kitchen table and had coffee and snacks.

Her hyper-activated offspring was not irritating her though, my sister was on the contrary much bothered by the recent breakup of Yui and myself. It seems the All Girls Network had propagated tidings at the speed of female gossip. However I was not adjudicated to be a scum by ladies, but rather the victim along with Yui of "incompatibility" and therefore an object of pity and sympathy. To me that was worse than being scum in the eyes of society, a person should never be pitied for what they are.

"Yui is taking a vacation and going to Australia with a couple of work friends," Komachi read a text from her phone and relayed post-breakup instruction, "She'd like you to box up her things, and Sensei will come by soon with a rented van to take them to Yui's apartment."

"Oh Onii-chan," my dear imouto put the phone down and gave a very long sigh, "did it really have to go that way? Your imouto was so glad her hard work and persistence to get Onii-chan hooked up seemed to finally pay off!"

"Komachi-chan, your Onii-chan can't alter his core nature; others might accept it, or they just can't. But I shouldn't put on an act, be something I'm not. A relationship that broke because of my being true to myself were doomed from the start."

"You are like a monster of logic, Onii-chan," said Komachi dully and without emoting, unknowingly repeating the verdict delivered with laughter of a woman long dead, and déjà vu gave me a chill.

"Being part of a close intimate couple just may not be for me, Komachi, and trying to force a romantic situation is only asking for heartbreak and despair."

"Onii-chan, I think somewhere there is a woman who will approve fully of the way you are, After all I do, so we can't give up hope! Ooo that was worth so many Komachi points!" That's my Komachi, ever the optimist in the quest to get her onii-chan married off. Then a serious expression replaced the cheerful one, "I'm thinking of someone though who always enjoyed everything about Onii-chan, but it's really not proper to speak of her right now." She appeared almost ready to ask a question but remained silent.

Komachi knew of The Affair, she had tricked me into divulging it when her suspicions were raised by my being incommunicado for too long. Back in high school days Komachi sometimes had accompanied me and a certain someone on many activities. Yukino was no doubt on her mind.

Handling the detritus of a broken bond, I was boxing up lingerie, cosmetics, garments into garment bags then long boxes...there came awkward items like pictures with both of us and things owned by us both. These made the pain inside worsen. I decided it would not be in good taste to return any of those at this time as it would mean rejection of those shared memories. I believed over the very long haul Yui would surely be some kind of friend again, there would definitely come a proper day when we could deal with those kinds of memorabilia. I would store those in the attic for now.

As expected, I fell back into a routine of single life rather quickly, like a beast of burden making circles round a millstone. I refrained from meeting acquaintances and friends, they understood and gave me space. I was neither sad nor happy, I expected nothing and so wasn't disappointed. Surely this was the best way to live, neither bound nor being a burden.

My daily lectures and grading whiled away the daytime. In the evening my writing muse was fueled by solitude, and so I made great strides in my current light novel. Until one night the all too familiar demon of writer's block came round to visit my abode to make an attack, and my well honed writer's reflexes parried the fell creature's effort by ignoring him totally, to instead loose my mind to wander the convolutions of my brain. This was the best way to counter that recurrent menace, to think of unrelated matters.

I turned in my study's chair and looked down the hall. Sensei, always Hiratsuka-sensei in my mind though Satoshi-san to the world, should have just finished a teaching convention before the start of this new school year. I'd need to call her to come get Yui's things. The stack of Yui's boxes still occupied an area the spare room, and right now that closed door may as well have been glass. The ache of missing a dear friend and lover reappeared in my upper torso, though I had never cried from the breakup and did not now.

My inner philosopher, that dark and cynical guy, was awake and set to his work. That brown monument of boxes trimmed with packing tape stood for five intertwined things: what I thought I wanted, what I thought I needed, what I tried to grasp, and what things were actually gained and what major portion ultimately lost. It could also be said to be the precise arithmetic difference between Yuigahama Yui's hopes and the reality of Hikigaya Hachiman's being. The obverse even was a truth, my belief that Yiu had accepted all of me was slain and entombed in that cardboard volume.

So was it impossible, to be known and understood at a level beyond a false mental model in another's mind? To have the assurance, to be certain, that another even with perfect understanding of another there would complete acceptance? Such a true bond between humans, could it exist? For I concluded that was my thirst, though I made a life journey in a desert of sand and rock. Did the loner bear make himself stronger ignoring that thirst, or should finding a mythical fount to slake it be his quest?

One thing was a surety, while it may be denied me, taboo for me, unreachable for me or anyone, or just plain nonexistent…. I yearned for that true bond.

I called Sensei.

"Hikigaya, Satori and I are too busy today, could I come by with the van tomorrow afternoon and pick up the boxes?"

"Shizuka-sensei," and that's how she insist we address her, to assure her of her youthfulness, "a large storm is supposed to hit, could we do it later in the week?"

"No, I'll be too busy preparing for the start of the new school year, it has to be tomorrow. Just open your garage when I come and I'll pull in, OK?" My attached two car garage, designed no doubt for a married couple, was mostly empty but for the dusty little economy car on one side I hardly ever drove, and a pile of crap along the back wall. With a storm in progress it would be convenient to just walk the boxes through the rear interior door into the van.

* * *

That night the Yukinoshitas' were again the subject of the news.

_"Tragedy again has struck the Yukinoshita family and its empire. The body of the wife of Councilor Yukinoshita-san was found this morning, the death apparently a suicide. Sources wishing to remain anonymous say a note was left and that the death was in the ancient manner of a traditional samurai woman committing jigai…."_

An old picture of the Scariest Yukinoshita Woman was displayed, those eyes much like Yukino's and Haruno's but without ever knowing mirth or warmth, all cold and with malice. I remembered well the several times being in their malevolent focus during my teens, and I shivered.

Did she really bind her knees with red silk cords, lest the twitching of her dying corpse part her legs immodestly, and then kneel to stab herself in the throat? I quaked yet more, my writers mind had for but a moment provided that heinous phantasm.

Where were Yukino and her daughter. Were they safe and secure? Or were they inside the circle of violence now spreading through the Yukinoshita's? My stomach churned with dread and apprehension. But I was powerless to do anything; my anxiety was pointless.

That night my writer's muse returned with fury and hot energy, late into the night the blur of my fingers crammed my thoughts into my PC.

* * *

The taillights of a van I could barely see turned into my driveway; I hit the button to open the garage door, the roar of water hitting pavement drowning out engine sounds as the vehicle continued to back into my garage. The engine cut and I lowered the door. The driver's door opened and my jaw dropped full open as a blue jeaned leg far too petite to be Sensei's put a foot adorned with an exorbitantly priced shoe onto the ground. A woman wore dark glasses and a Chiba Lotte Marine's baseball hat and t-shirt under a distressed leather jacket with wide collar turned up, it was a sort of disguise. Not yet looking at my mortified form, she slid open the side door. I heard latches being released and a little girl with knee length hair, brown just like her father's leaped out.

The pair, mother and child, then turned to me. The woman removed the glasses and cap, shaking out her jet black hair. Those deep moist piercing eyes, so like her deceased mother's but having warmth and kindness and mirth, were over a slight smug grin formed by full and shapely pink lips, between exquisite high cheekbones of classic beauty. She had breasts now larger from bearing a child, sensual toned hips and thighs and long legs of a goddess' sculpture rendered in flesh; all those things confirmed I was in the presence of Snowden nee Yukinoshita Yukino. My knees went weak, my palm slapped against the rear wall of the garage to purchase support. My eyes began to sting and water, from relief and from joy of merely being privileged to see and hear her once again.

The little girl bowed, "I am Nozomi, written with the Kanji for 'hopeful truth', Dr. Hikigaya!", she exclaimed with a diction far too advanced for a girl of four years, and then laughed hard, "Mommy, you're right he does look like a tall Pan-san!"

"Dr. Hikigaya Hachiman, I have a request. Would you like to hear it?", that finely controlled voice of peaceful melody ever having grace and dignity reached my ears, "Or would you rather stand gaping and slack jawed, leaning like a drunkard?"


	6. Goal

Satoshi-san and Sensei, you got me again! Twice in five years and you really, REALLY got me this time around! I could just imagine them laughing themselves to tears as they sent Yukino and Nozomi off in that rental van to my house.

Yukino and I were in the kitchen while her daughter was in the living room performing surgery on a Pan-san plushie, something involving a toy robot kit, a tiny Cranberry Pi X hobbyist computer, and one of my old laptops. She hummed a very complex and rapid chromatic melody while she worked on bringing life to Pansanstein's Monster, I suspected the little chubby cheeked cherub of one day being even more intelligent than her mother.

I poured the tea and set down a plate of cookies, saying "Snowden Yukino-san, I'm very sorry about your husband and mother."

She did not even remove the bemused grin from her visage as she replied, "Well that would make one of us, Dr. Hikigaya. My daughter barely remembers her father. He and my mother both chose to go down the path of evil, and have reaped the rewards of what they sowed. Putting aside my own life, they have put my daughter's life in grave peril, and I shall never forgive them. Also, I have disowned the name Snowden, I am retaking my father's name, I am Yukinoshita Yukino!" she declared as the old fire was in her eyes and voice.

She took a sip of the tea, and spoke in a calmer manner over the top of the cup.

"Dr. Hikigaya, my daughter and I needed a place to hide, and the Satoshi's were kind enough to let us stay at their home while they were away. But now they have many evenings of guests scheduled to come, even tonight so Sensei couldn't be here right now. So we need another refuge with an absolutely trustworthy person. And so I am here to request that of you, Dr. Hikigaya."

"The great Yukinoshita Yukino considers my shady and cynical self 'absolutely trustworthy'?" I asked with mock pompousness, feeling hints of a grin forming on my lips, starting to feel a long departed yet familiar old mood taking hold of me.

"Let us prepend hideous and rotten-eyed, lest we insult those merely cynical and shady. And 'trash' appended to comply with truth-in-advertising laws," said the Ice Queen of Sobu High, smiling more broadly.

"Wasn't that last part totally unnecessary?"

"So we are in complete agreement on the hideousness and rotten-eyedness", said Smug Yukino, a particular mannerism and face of hers long ago embossed in my Taxonomy of Yukino Faces.

We both had a chuckle, then Yukinoshita looked down and her face became slightly pink. "You know, after all these years, you could call me Yukino, old school friends use their first names with each other these days, even our Sensei does it."

"Well, if that's in vogue now, you can call me Hachiman," I said feeling my face getting a bit warm. "And I do have a spare room and futon for refuge, you and your daughter are welcome to stay as long as you wish."

Yukino stood up and bowed very deeply, a rare ritual for this world I never expected to be directed toward me let alone enacted, "I am in your debt….Hachiman."

"Yukino, there isn't a debt. I don't want any thing or recompense from you; if I can help in any way to keep you and your daughter safe, I'll be glad."

"Can I call him Hachiman-san too?" Nozomi piped up, standing in the kitchen doorway.

"Yes that's fine, Nozomi-chan," I replied.

When the rain stopped, I donned a baseball cap and sunglasses and my own jacket with collar turned up, and drove the van full of Yui's boxes to the garage at Sensei's house, not saying a word to the Satoshis' about our mutual secret and their Mother of All Pranks upon me even as all our faces bore a perpetual smirk. Sensei returned me, ducked down, in her (second, only five year old) Vantage V8.

After humming for a while, tapping her finger on the steering wheel to provide an rhythm section to her music, Sensei started to speak as counselor to student.

"Hikigaya, long ago I hoped someone would break through Yukino's shell, to give her true friendship so she wouldn't have to face the world alone. Yui and yourself were on your way toward that goal, but things just didn't quite work out. Yukino has mostly only known manipulation and bonds with others made for mutual gain. She did have a friend in Yui until recently, but ...well with your and Yui's recent breakup, and Yukino choosing to be with you, that might mean Yui would no longer be her friend, at least for some time until hopefully all of you reconcile.

"Yukino has again chosen you for some reason, when she is pushed against the wall by the world you are the one she seeks. Hikigaya, what are you going to do?"

She didn't wait for any words from me, the question was rhetorical as she turned on some loud music.

We entered my garage continuing a shell game played with people exiting and entering vehicles only in closed garages. After brief words of assurance and support, Sensei gave Nozomi and Yukino a hug, and I opened the garage door to let her car leave. We had taken a large empty box and reinforced it from the inside with a few more pieces of cardboard against collapse. That was in Sensei's open trunk with the lid bungee corded over it, as if Sensei were retrieving one more large item the van was too full to take.

I wiped off my dusty car and went grocery and supply shopping with an elaborate yet inexpensive list Yukino had made. I was looking forward to five star chef level cousine; Yukino's cooking skill was amazing during high school, culinary expertise product of a rich girl's upbringing. Some food with long shelf life and bottles of water would be left in the trunk of my car, as well as first aid kit. I had run inside and scooped up a dozen cheap stick-on wireless security cameras from the department store, Yukino would wipe and reprogram those (abysmal built in security, she said) tomorrow and I'd stick them outside and inside various places of my home. Blankets, Nozomi's booster seat and other things I'd add to the car tonight; I didn't need my car at all in my daily life and Yukino could use it to flee any time if need be.

I refused to take any of her cash, as it was uncertain how long even such a large collection of bills would have to last since she should not use any electronic funds for obvious reasons. After a random thought I stopped by an ATM and took out the maximum allowed amount. Japan thankfully was even in the 21st century a very old-fashioned "cash and carry" loving country and no notice would be taken if I started a series of withdrawals; I would only be thought of as acting like a typical old person stuck in the old ways. I too might need to disappear in another direction from Yukino and her daughter. Maybe I was just being overly paranoid, but I was in real life acting out a preparedness mindset natural to Zaimokuza and I in various games.

No strange vehicles or people were on my street or adjacent ones, I texted my report to Yukino on the phone she gave me, and she sent back an all clear to enter my garage. She herself apparently had designed algorithms for chips used in many of the world's phones as she led from the front the engineers of her tech subsidiaries. My own beloved iPhone-san was confiscated and consigned for the foreseeable future to a bag made of metal mesh, though calls and texts to its number from whitelisted family and friends would through some black art to reach me on the new phone.

The phones we were using did what I could only understand to be nefarious things to communicate with the normal networks by ways ever mutable with sporadic parallel paths not traceable as a single phone. I already missed my iPhone though, the Yukino Spy Phone (name subject to change) took a bit more effort to work the UI, and I was already berated by the Ice Cold Beauty for having lazy fingers, barely trainable mind, rotten eyes and a poor attitude in general as a modern cellular telephony student. All this while I was blinking more quickly than normal to keep the level of moisture in my eyes near normal, for truth be told I almost was crying for joy to be treated like that again, was I an M type?

So strange to have a child at the dinner table besides adults, this was like being at Komachi's house.

"Itadakimasu!"

Yukino waited for my critique of my first taste.

"I'm wanting to say it's passable, just to avoid further inflating any already world-sized egos," Yukino's eyebrow went up and I continued, "but yes, this fish really is wonderfully done. Thank you for cooking this evening."

Yukino blushed red while staring at her plate, "I have never been praised nor thanked for my cooking by any man in over twelve years," she said quietly.

Ah, the long-lost face of DereDerenon makes its reappearance! Perchance those other creatures near extinction, Clumsinon, Sleepynon,Twin-Tails Casualnon and Spaghettinon, shall soon again be spotted in the wild!

Later Yukino and I talked for quite a while, after Nozomi had been bathed and put to bed.

"So you and Yui have broken up," Yukino said matter-of-factly.

"Yes. The crux of the matter was that I was too boring and low of social energy for so lively a woman."

"Yes Yui is lively, and can tire out one trying to keep up with her in social matters. This I know very well. Though I am truly sorry things could not have worked between you two. Even in high school I had thought you both could be happy together."

"Perhaps if I had not rejected her, and we had been together earlier in life, to have grown more accustomed to each other with less weight of adult expectations, things might have even worked out," I mused.

We were silent for a while, lost in our own thoughts. But then Yukino and I never considered silence to be the awkward thing most do when two or more are together in one room. Rather that was the time for rumination and reflection, we both valued it.

"Hachiman, though neither of us intended it, there is sense in which both you and I caused the deaths of my husband and my mother."

"You mean those pictures I had taken, sent to the Ministry of Justice?"

"Yes. They precipitated an investigation into illegal real estate machinations my mother had been performing for years. She had been using the head of her personal security detail for that, and contrary to the popular report in the news, her driver Gotou Chuga, whom you used to call The Harbinger of Doom, is still at large. My husband was a weak man, and lusted for money after I took control of most of his fortune…. with perhaps a little help from a rotten-eyed cynic."

Yukino blessed me with yet another little smile, making my heart jump, then continued, "Mother starting using him for her crimes. Father I believe was ignorant of these things, besides politics his passion is heavy construction, not the buying and selling of real estate nor any of the other subsidiaries' activities. The suicide note my mom left outlines her history of crime, claiming innocence for her husband, though who knows how events will unfold."

"Yukino, Zaimokuza and I were only trying to find out what was happening to a little favorite neighborhood of ours. It had wonderful stores for our hobbies such as light novels and console games and anime. We weren't looking for national level crimes."

"Hachiman, I was only curious why my husband wasn't at home any more, why he stopped being a father to Nozomi. But….I then had revelations about my own business concerns too. My businesses and those of my family are intertwined in all kinds of complicated ways. I don't want wealth built on blood and crime, but that's my foundation as ignorance is no excuse, and now things may topple as they deserve to do. The government will seize and freeze much of our assets while investigations unfold for years.

"An attempt was made on the life of myself and my daughter while we were in our limousine. Do you remember my driver Tsuzuki-san? He actually smashed the corner off of a building with the automobile to escape a blockade of semitrucks intended as part of an attempt to assassinate us. I knew then that Gotou Chuga had discovered I was collecting and relaying data. For indeed since I saw you and Zaimokuza-san playing spy I have provided the Ministry of Justice with reams of anything I considered helpful in uncovering the crimes of my mother.

"Tsuzuki-san is retired from the Special Forces Group, and while I am in refuge he has gone on a personal vendetta, to eliminate the threat of Gotou Chuga and his minions to me and my daughter. He called that attack by Gotou a personal insult. Those two always despised each other."

Yukino let out a very long sigh, now looking tired and very frail.

"Hachiman, my whole life is a lie, except for my having a daughter. I will not mold her with guilt and manipulation as my mother did, nor schedule her adult life. I'll give her direction and support out of love alone and not greed. She is my only purpose now."

"Taking good care of family is the most important thing a human can do, and the mother is the prime source of care," I replied. "Don't worry about the world, just have a good night's rest, Yukino."

"Good night, Hachiman." Yukino went to the spare room to join her daughter.

I lay in my bedroom, on the bed that all too recently also held a mutual friend of Yukino and myself. The only reason I wasn't in the spare room, and mother and child not offered the more comfortable bed here was because it would be too repulsive and disgusting to put them on a bed where Yui and I did….those deeply intimate things. What cruel jest of the RomCom gods was this, to have Yukino here so very soon after Yui had left? But even so I had a duty, I vowed I would live up to Yukino's trust at any cost to myself and provide a safe haven for her and her child. I knew damned well why I could say such a thing with no mental reservation whatsoever.

There was a sentence I never spoke, that was only ever an answer forged in the depths of my soul after asked a question by Yui five years ago: If ever I saw Yukino again, what would I tell her. I would tell her that I loved her.

Now wasn't the time, but if the specter of danger and ominous clouds of threat should pass, I would definitely tell her. She probably would mock me, likely would dismiss me with words of teasing and levity, certainly would leave my dwelling to continue her life on that plane that was far into the stratosphere, wisely finding a worthy man. A world class titan of her own choosing, overflowing with power and wealth and handsomeness, to be a proper mate and father to Nozomi.

But even so, I still would tell her, I had to tell her! That true bond, that thing I wanted and needed and had to grasp and wished to gain, that true bond with Yukinoshita Yukino was my thirst.


	7. Home

_From RalphZiggy: for that silly and corny thing Zaimokuza is about to do, I preemptively and humbly beg forgiveness, in a Z-man story I just HAD TO HAVE IT._

_Some bits of geek fodder mixed into Yukino's character, I imagine her as having both engineering and international business degrees in background, sometimes going hands-on with the tech end._

* * *

A small area of my cheek was being poked. Smells of rich food, sounds of sizzling and stirring and pans chastised by utensils made my stomach go very hungry and my mouth salivate. Poke, poke, poke. It would seem managerial pokings would continue until employee moral improved. I opened one eye, reached for the Yukino Spy Zero phone and saw I had ten more minutes before the alarm would sound.

A creature of four legs galloped up and down on my side. "Wake up! Wake up! Hachiman-san! If you get up we can eat sooner!"

Turning my head and opening both orbs I saw puppy-dog eyes (likely her father's, not Yukinoshita womens' eyes at all), chubby cheeks, long brown hair expanding in all directions and contracting as its owner bounced exposing miniaturized versions of Yukino's ears, also Yukino's lips rendered minuscule. So cute!

"OK OK I'm getting up! Clear the launch tube, deploy the mecha!" I said as I lifted up and dropped her flopping as a laughing pile behind me, and sat up.

"Mommy must like you a lot, I've never seen her work so hard on breakfast! Hurry up, Hachiman-san!" she bunny-hopped down the hall, "Mommy! Mommy! I made Hachiman-san get up!"

The alarm on the phone from Mars sounded, the watchman's call to a war that already had come and gone. I made myself semi-presentable, and left my bathroom to have a limpet firmly attach itself to my leg. "Yay! Hachiman-san is ready! Let's go, Hachiman-san!"

From my vast uncle-skills repertoire it was clearly time to do the Ogre Walk. I lumbered down the hall, carrying the squealing Nozomi seated on my foot and hugging my leg, with deep voice providing narration .

"The towering ogre's feet drum the land, he is hungry and approaching the village!"

A bemused Yukino watched our antics entering the dining room. A lavishly laid out spread had omelettes stuffed with sautéed mushrooms and vegetables, hand fried donuts with fruit and cream filling, rice and meat, and fruit salad. I confess to being smitten with guilt for Yukino working hard in the early morning.

I pinched some of the omelette egg and mushroom mix with my chopsticks, Yukino's focus was so intent on me my heart started beating quickly. Yukino was holding her breath! Nozomi was looking at her and then at me, and then back to her mother. Placing the piece of food on my tongue I discovered...sweetened whipped eggs almost lighter than air tasting also of cheese and butter and something not quite peppery, mushrooms and vegetables subtly spiced so flavor was not covered just accented and respected.

"Yukino", she made the tiniest move that suggested a soldier coming to attention, and it just wasn't in me to tease her despite one part of my brain floating that trial balloon, "you've created a work of art here, thank you, it's beyond delicious."

"Mommy is red like a strawberry!" proclaimed Nozomi with food in her mouth.

I was starting my day an hour early, to take the ladder outside before daylight to place the cheap cameras, wiped and reprogrammed en masse by Yukino in minutes, with their adhesive pads.

* * *

During my lectures I had the phone on the lectern, across the top it had counts for people in my house: two. Vehicles going too slowly, or making repeated passes: zero. People approaching home, zero. Helicopters and drones, zero. Dogs: zero. Was that last stat really necessary, Yukino? Thanks to onward marching tech those cheap cameras also had sound and night vision. I could while giving my lecture even go to feeds activated by movement or people, right now I saw Yukino teaching Nozomi who was writing on paper. A yellow caution count created by a slow moving vehicle was revealed to be a usual delivery truck just bypassing my house. A composite picture of the driver was created from multiple frames and cameras, the data on my phone came from a Rocks Cluster (her words, meaningless to me) of very thin flexible prototype cell phones held on edge in a little transparent enclosure in my study. I recognized the usual delivery guy. I white listed the driver, lowering the future false positives. All done while instructing college students, better home security through Yukitech!

Later I saw Yukino doing house cleaning and my laundry while Nozomi twiddled with her toys and my old laptop, so odd in the extreme to see an executive and master engineer recently worth hundreds of billions of yen doing my menial chores. I thought back to the Service Club days and how Yukino would always be the one to clean the room and cups, make tea and often make snacks, do physical work for requests and projects of the club. So opposite the wear-the-nails but never-get-them-dirty typical upper executive or industry leader or spoiled rich girl, I marveled anyone with her background and upbringing and near superhuman capabilities could have that side to them.

Arriving home after carrying a large box on train and bus, I made sure to close the door first before the traditional Japanese announcement.

"I'm home!"

"Yay! Hachiman-san is here!"

Nozomi ran up and climbed me like a tree, so I put her on my shoulders.

"Let's open your present, Nozomi" I said pushing the box with my foot to the center of the living room. Nozomi wanted to immediately climb down for inspecting her present but I declared "You're trapped by the haunted tree!" and kept catching her and pulling her up while she repeated "My Present! My Present!".

It was an electronic keyboard, their being cooped up indoors made me consider activities for them for variety. Yukino could give her over-precocious daughter some music lessons. I also had two headphones and a Y connector for the thing, for practice and learning at times when a certain beast of burden needed to be pounding text into PC or needed a nap.

"Th...Thank you for being so thoughtful, Hachiman," Yukino was rubbing her eyes.

"it's nothing at all, just an idea I had," I replied.

After their first music lesson of an hour and a half, we had afternoon reading and tea time. Nozomi didn't get tea but rather juice in a tea cup. My heart almost flew into the air to peek over my book at Yukino sitting in the easy chair, flipping a page with those long delicate fingers. And there goes that ticklish burning in my eyes and upper nostrils again, do I have allergies? There was a god, and he favored Hikigaya Hachiman!

Reading Time was occasion when once in a while discussion might be had, so said precedent laid down in our second year of high school.

"Yukino, I saw you working very hard today on cleaning and laundry. You know, I can do those things. You always get focused on the task in front of you and drive yourself too hard. You don't have to push yourself right now. You can relax and do things interesting to you, and spend time with your daughter."

"It's not a problem, Hachiman, I actually like the housework, it's something I really didn't have to do for years, having servants. I've spent far too long doing the things I was expected to do, and this time right now is a welcome change. To be reading and having tea with you, it's a reminder of a very precious time of my life."

"I see. Well let me do some of the housework, and maybe I can cook for you both at times, I have my specialties."

"Hachiman's curry he made for Komachi, for example?" Yukino asked with recollection of something my imouto once said.

"Yes, that and a few other simple things."

"I look forward to trying them soon, then."

We continued reading for a while.

"Hachiman, I've added new features to the security apps, allow me to begin the slow torturous process of imprinting them into your mind."

"Oy! Isn't it more accurate to say I'm an iPhone man and alternatives keep interfering with my workflow?"

"Could we tersely summarize you're a one-trick pony?" Yukino sat down next to me, her hair brushing against my arm and her scent wafted into my nose.

She taught me her apps' new capabilities, and sometimes touched my forearm with her fingers as she emphasized points of procedure. There might just be another reason for my for difficulty in concentration here, you know. She turned silent as I practiced. I heard her breathing grow deeper, and glancing to my left I saw her eyes were closed. Her head slowly landed on my shoulder, hair totally covering my arm, followed by her full weight on my side and shoulder. She had indeed worn herself to exhaustion today as she now was in deep sleep.

I put down the phone, and used my right arm to take the folded comforter off the back of the couch and carefully covered her. I returned to reading my book one handed. Nozomi had sketched a picture to go with the story she was reading, and was coloring it almost like a painter by blended overlapping lines of colored pencils. She turned to me, closed one eye, and made the gesture to be quiet over a grin.

Later I told a rather flustered Yukino not to worry about her co-opting me as a body pillow, what happened was nothing. After a contrite apology with small voice, her face then lit up, and much to my amazement she put her head on my shoulder again, changing the angle of her head a few times, then sat up and confidently suggested that gutting me and filling me with softer stuffings might result in a superior customer experience.

* * *

After a marvelous dinner, Nozomi was playing in the hallway while Yukino and I watched the news. She sat on the couch next to me, saying she would be sure to keep alert lest any resident deviants take advantage of a sleeping beauty.

"A video gone viral, leaked from the Ministry of Justice, shows the amazing subduing of the two men wanted in the James Snowden killing."

The screen cut to a clip from a a security camera that also had a sound feed. The very wide angle perspective was from the ceiling in a corner, to the left was a window covered from the inside with blinds, and glass door of a much-coveted director's corner office.

None other than Zaimokuza Yoshitero's chibified body, an artifact of the lens, walked into the office holding a thick accordion folder, probably for discourse with his famous rising young prosecutor boss. Far down the aisle in the background two bearded workers were moving furniture into an unoccupied cubicle. Other workers pushed keyboard buttons for a living. The two movers suddenly abandoned their task, striding quickly toward the camera with purpose. Reaching under their company jackets they drew half-meter wakizashi [short swords], and threw open the door to the corner office and entered.

I feared for my friend Yoshitero for two seconds. I felt some relief and hope to see the swords hit the glass with most of the blades going first flat against the window with the blinds behind them, then falling out of view to the floor. Then matters went from merely hopeful to best possible, and I could exhale. An indistinct set of two syllables was heard in a loud male voice, and with the crash and spray of shards both disarmed men along with half an L-shaped desk and the blinds hit two meter high cabinets on the opposite side of the aisle to the right, knocking the heavy paper filled steel boxes over. "-ZA CRUSHER!", finished my chuunibyou friend's cry. Zaimokuza opened and leaped out from the door landing with one foot on each of the two men's chests interrupting their dazed and feeble attempts to rise. Bending over, Zaimokuza's torso twisted left and right as he pummeled the faces of the attackers, arms like twin driving pistons of a speeding steam locomotive.

Zaimokuza stopped to bend double and pant, stepped back down to the floor and started to shake. The men behind him were out cold. Then a realization hit him, he turned and ran down the aisle, out a glass door far away, and into a men's room. The clip stopped and the faces of the two wanted henchmen I had photographed filled the screen, they had worn realistic rubber face masks as part of the disguise. They were now in police custody.

I snickered, then guffawed, then started to belly laugh grabbing myself with both arms. Yukino was stifling her mouth with her fingers in an elegant ladylike way, when out slipped an uncontained giggle, then she started to shake with laughter as she hid her face behind a cushion. "His Finishing Move!" she managed to gasp, and that sent us both into fresh gales of laughter with her trying to tell me to be silent already while slapping my forearm.

"Mommy, Hachiman-san! Why are you being so funny?" Nozomi wanted to know.

"We saw an old friend on TV, he stopped some very bad men in a funny way. He tossed them through the air like beanbags," I managed to explain while wiping tears.

"What are beanbags?" Nozomi asked.

"Just a minute, let me find them."

The beanbag toss game was in a box the back of my garage, something I meant to bring to Komachi's house for an outdoor birthday party. We spent some time lobbing beanbags down the hall into the angled wall of bucket holes, but both mother and daughter quickly mastered the necessary techniques to soundly beat me with cruise missile accuracy, leaving me the recipient of not one but two Smug Yukino faces.

* * *

The next two weeks I was at home, it was in between academic years for my college. I cooked some of the meals, my culinary skills sometimes criticized (with Yukino's finger pressing her forehead for perceived gross infractions), and at other times praised, but my endeavors always were a source of fascination and entertainment for Nozomi and Yukino both. I did housework with Yukino, those chores more efficiently done by two people we did as synchronized pair. We did exercises with Nozomi so everyone would stay in shape, important for those confined to the indoors. Yukino and I bantered and discussed and debated whatever topic came to mind.

Then an ill omen befell us, Yukino was subpoenaed by a mail to her primary residence that was recorded by staff, for a disposition in person at the Ministry of Justice. Gotou Chuga might consider this a strategic time to strike against a witness to crimes where he was complicit.


	8. Bond

Nozomi was sick, I was slightly so myself for only part of a day, but her high fever and shaking were serious. I felt very bad since the only possible one who could have brought in disease from the outside was myself. Probably from sharing the train or the buses with an infected person.

"It can't be helped, Hachiman, these things always happen with groups of humans. We rely on your going out among others to get us our provisions, and have no right to complain. Don't trouble yourself with guilt. But Nozomi needs to see a doctor, and it's a surety this will expose our refuge."

"Yes, we need to get Nozomi medical care, and also put our plans for fleeing into action. We'll not return home," I agreed. To use the word "home" for a building that held not only myself but Yukino and Nozomi, I never would have believed a world-line like that was possible, let alone that I would live in it!

We'd leave Yukino's Rocks Cluster, to continue to gather intelligence should anyone trace us after visiting an urgent care center. It could be wiped remotely if my home were invaded, and would "brick" itself if it "smelled" unknown people attempting to tamper with it.

We packed my little economy car to leave for an unknown amount of time. Yukino being a petite woman, she sat behind my seat, with the front passenger's seat being fully forward to allow Nozomi's booster seat to fit behind with room for her to stretch her legs. I realized I didn't even feel remorse leaving my house and my accumulations of life, the dear and precious things were inside my car, and mere real estate and possessions could burn to the ground behind us without any sorrow on my part.

"Let's go!" I said, opening the door and starting my car. On the road we made the doctor's appointment and arrived five minutes before the scheduled time. I waited in the car outside, the smaller width of a block away, engine running. Yukino and Nozomi returned, with a prescription and doctor's assurance she would feel immediately much better, and probably be well in three or four days. A pharmacy we chose fifteen kilometers away prepared the prescription in forty minutes.

I stopped the car on the way to the pharmacist, went into a restaurant and put my garage door's remote and a set of my house keys into a particular overcoat hanging in the vestibule, my peripheral vision registering a lean gray haired and mustached man, having a lunch seven meters away. Arriving at the druggist, again with my car on another street, Yukino went inside and returned with medicine that she administered as we started the drive to the countryside.

We checked into an old traditional inn, my using cash and registering with bogus names a wife and child, the RomCom gods looking over my shoulder and chortling in my ear. Hikigaya Hachiman was on vacation with Yukino! Well OK actually on holiday as a flight from potential assassins.

It was that evening it happened, the forces of darkness had pieced together Yukino's necessary use of identity card with some connection to my car, from some security camera of a nearby searched business no doubt. First our phones lit up with warnings of expensive hobbyist drones buzzing about the house. If they had been modified to have thermal imaging, they would see a man (real), and also two warm masses under a blanket in the spare room (heated dummies). A van came down the street and pulled into a neighbor's driveway, causing an alert from the presence of an incongruous vehicle not known to be associated with that house.

From all my gaming I understood what ensued, call the tactics typical SWAT or urban warfare or counter-terrorism, they all studied from the similar playbooks. Men dressed and masked in black quickly disembarked and "snaked up" not by my front door but around the corner from my garage door, lead man with combat shotgun and the rest having Uzi submachine guns, by the size of the barrel holes chambered for 10mm Auto I'd be able to tell Zaimokuza one day. Det cord was placed on my poor garage door, and a cylinder of gray and white leaped toward the street with accompanying whip crack. The men lobbed in flash-bang grenades, then stormed into the Hikigaya residence.

The night vision mode of a non-destroyed camera showed the the lead man reaching the interior door. He blew it off its hinges with slugs from his shotgun, but then the side wall of my garage counter-attacked, modified M18A1 claymore mines knocked the men down with some kind of (usually) non-lethal loading. Fortunately for them Yukino had forbade intentional bloodshed. Tsuzuki-san, wearing gas mask and tactical gear, ran into the room and applied a stun gun to four of the men, one at the rear shakily raised himself but Tsuzuki shot him in the knee with a Taser, finishing the battle as the driver of the van down the road had already been neutralized by another of Yukino's security detail. Water started to pond around the fallen men from some broken pipe, and sparks came down from what remained of my door opener and garage light.

Tsuzuki unmasked the last man as he spasmed, it was the Harbinger of Doom, Gotou Chuga. Yukino's driver and three more who had entered disarmed and bound the criminals. Police sirens wailed, squad cars and swat vans and fire trucks converged on my suburban castle. I imagined a real estate listing:_ Fixer upper! Just needs a little handyman love!_

Light laughter came from Yukino seated next to me on the inn floor, in robe and with towel making a head dress around her wet hair. #8 Showernon was now filed forever in the Taxonomy.

"Hachiman, you are enjoying the partial destruction of your own home far too much!"

"But Yukino, that was SO COOL!"

Her fingers pressed her forehead, "Men are ever such juvenile creatures."

"Let's agree it's just a guy thing, Yukino."

"Chuunibyou!" she was poking my shoulder.

"Demon Super Woman!" I retorted, making us both laugh.

That night Komachi called when helicopter view of my home and perforated garage door in the midst of flashing red and blue lights and searchlights hit the news, together with mugshots and a story of the Yukinoshita's ongoing saga.

"Onii-chan, I was so scared!" sobbed Komachi.

"Komachi-chan, Onii-chan is just fine. I'm nowhere near my home but traveling."

Komachi calmed down, then quietly said "Oh, I see."

"Onii-chan, she's with you, isn't she?" No way would my clever imouto not connect dots after seeing the name Yukinoshita and my house in the news.

"I'll tell you everything soon, Komachi-chan! But please make sure you and my friends stay away from my home, just as a precaution. But everything should be fine now."

"Ooooh? You'd better spill all the beans, Onii-chan!"

I received a text from Yui.

"Hikki sorry to bother you, just want to know if you're OK."

"Yes, I'm traveling and not near my home. Thanks for your concern but everything is now fine," I sent back.

"Are you traveling with someone." I knew what Yui had surmised.

"Yes, someone found me again." There were no more texts from Yui.

* * *

A couple more days and Nozomi was fully well, she had rebounded and was back to her lively energized self.

"Haha, movie kisses!" said Nozomi who had turned on the TV, a man and woman were turning their heads slowly this way and that as they were deeply kissing. Yukino quickly changed the channel to a wild animal documentary.

"Little girls don't need to watch romance movies intended for adults!" she declared.

We decided to wait some more days to be assured all was really safe and clear. We exercised and played games with Nozomi, and her home teaching from her mother continued. We watched web views of my home being repaired. We went exploring the little town of our inn. Nozomi was overjoyed to be able to play in a park, improvising tag games and such with other children. She often was the leader of a kind of army of brats, the group getting bruises and skinned knees at times as war wounds.

We watched from some distance, breeze rustling the trees under a sunny sky with cotton puff clouds, birds singing and yells of children fully enjoying their innocent youths. Yukino was standing very close to me. She turned those ever deep intense moist eyes up to me, then repeated words from our youth, our last exchange after graduation, when we then parted ways for a decade.

"A loner boy meets a beautiful girl, and their wacky adventures ensue."

I remembered, back then Yukino made cryptic words of the tale of some doppelgangers of ours that inhabited a parallel universe unreachable from ours, her words were of disappointment in some variance between reality and an ideal she carried inside.

"Well, that happened after all, didn't it?"

"Yes, it happened after all, Hachiman."

"Hachiman, thank you for all the times you've helped me at immense cost to your self, I know I often..I always act like some ungrateful queen who just demands your help. I deeply apologize for using you and want you to know you are appreciated like no other person in my entire life."

"I didn't do any big thing, Yukino. Don't worry about it."

"Hachiman, having Nozomi has changed me. I looked back and realized the wrongs done against me when I was being raised, and how I tried to cover my damaged self with lies and a superiority complex and a default shell of hostility to others. Always I looked down on other people, even though in hindsight they had gifts and strengths I did not. And I ignored what I really needed and wanted, covered those things with piles of lies.

"Back then I had looked forward eagerly to my time with you in the Service Club, though I would have laughed at the notion of ever having romantic attraction. I would have said that a person of my standing could never have any bond with commoner, let alone a rotten-eyed brooding cynic with a dark world view."

"Yes, that I am. And be sure to add boring and trash."

Yukino then stood in front of me, and took both of my hands in her soft cool delicate ones. Long black hair swayed in slow reaction to passing breezes. Her powerful gaze from below looked deep into me, pink full lips parted with a long breath before continuing. I could have died that moment a happy man with no regrets.

Yukino finally spoke, "There is something I know now. The reason I so much delighted in your company in high school and why five years ago I sought you out and why I'm with you again, there was a truth my self-deception would never let me admit to myself. The truth was that Hikigaya Hachiman was extremely precious to me, and that I was in love with him. I loved you sixteen years ago and I love you now. My wish is that you'd always be with me, and that you'd help me raise Nozomi."

"Yukino, you know…. I've loved you for a very long time," I could only get those many words out, not the many thoughts I was imagining I'd say when the time was right.

She nodded, "Yes, I've known that too."

"Ew! Gross! Change the channel! Hachiman-san and Mommy are making movie kisses!"

Movie kisses tasted like lychee. For me that is, for someone else like MAX Coffee, which was wrong as expected.

* * *

We returned to my house, newly repaired and also with a different and larger bed in my bedroom. After Nozomi was bathed and put to bed, I picked up Yukino princess style and whispered into her ear, "the loner boy and beautiful girl need to do something together."

Yukino blushed and nodded.

"Hachiman, you know I have stretch marks from bearing a child, and I'm in my 30s. I no longer have the body of a young maiden."

"It's fine."

Setting her onto the bed, taking her clothes off revealed a body even more beautiful than my fantasies. I covered her with kisses everywhere.

"Hachiman!...I've...I've never been kissed there before!" she had tensed as if shocked with electricity and gasped.

"Don't worry about anything, Yukino, just relax and accept," and I continued my ministrations to her most sensitive place.

We made love many times that night. We also bantered and philosophized about whatever came to mind. I obliquely asked her about birth control too, but she merely smiled and said there was something else she and Nozomi wanted of me.

* * *

Yukino still had billions in unfrozen assets, and just a few weeks later we lived in a house in a secure subdivision without servants, the security detail and some staff were in houses next door and across the street. My own home was for sale. We agreed to a life in a cozy home as a family rather than a mansion, and did our own housework. Sometimes I did the cooking, and Yukino started to instruct me in more elaborate food preparation. We shopped for furnishings and decorations and food and supplies together. Nozomi continued to be taken care of without nanny.

Yukino mostly worked from home, when I came home from University had tea and reading time and then we both toiled on our respective computers on a long two-person desk in the study. Rocks Cluster-san, hidden under the concrete slab of the floor, still watched our home and the staff ones and unbeknownst to our neighbors actually the whole subdivision. Much to the delight of Yukino and Nozomi both, I had one day come home with a black and white cat they named Giichi; now ruler of the house hierarchy.

* * *

We decided we would attend the class reunion this year, including with Nozomi since children were invited and children's activities were part of the venue.

Entering with Yukino on my arm and Nozomi orbiting in zigzags, the random bustle of the crowd went nearly silent but for whispers.

Kawasaki Saki thanked us both for helping her in the past, told us all about the current high school activities of the one of her daughters whose life I saved, apologized to Yukino for being grumpy and delinquent-like years ago, and finally congratulated us and said she hoped we'd have a huge family.

Tobe gave us a thumbs up and too-loud "Congrats, Hikitani-kun", while Hina also gave us her blessing but also hoped my budding bromances wouldn't be forsaken.

"The buds are only between your ears, Hina."

Zaimokuza and Meguri were quite the center of attention, his being a hero on TV a big topic that night.

"Hachiman, did you see? I have avenged our favorite place, single handedly taking down the dread warrior pair!"

"Yes, yes Zaimokuza, but did you make it to the men's room in time afterwards?"

The cutely handsome in a metrosexual sort of way Totsuka was there with his male spouse, inviting us to a future game of couples tennis.

"I think that's a very special and wonderful thing, Hachiman, to be with someone you were so close to in high school." He looked down shyly, "Too bad that didn't happen to me."

Minami Sagami gave us her thanks for giving her a second chance with the sports festival those many years ago, saying that taught her a lifelong lesson of working seriously and properly valuing assistance.

Satoshi-san and Sensei had huge bear hugs for us. Sensei started to cry, saying she always intended for us to be a couple, and that her vision of the Service Club finally was complete with an ending worthy of a quality Shonen Manga.

"Isn't there something a bit wrong about using that as a measuring stick?" I replied.

Shizuka grew more serious,"Hikigaya, Yukino-chan. Promise me you two will always tell each other your problems, what is bothering you, what you want and need. Don't ever stop communicating."

We both made solemn promise to her, and reminded her we'd be her friends for life so she could keep us in shape in the future.

Yui had returned from overseas, she had a date and was with Hayama and Miura, their table was in the back and so last. Yukino and Hayama exchanged some words about that childhood event that parted them, agreeing they could have handled that better. Yukino said she would no longer be shaped by bullying but take a path that she wanted, and that what she wanted "included this dark philosophical creature here", taking my arm.

Miura and Hayama left to greet everyone, Yui's lip quivered and she took a breath.

"Hikki, Yukinon, I always thought you two should be together even when I sat between you two in the middle of the Club's table, and I'm really not surprised to see you together now. I hope someday we can all be friends again."

"Yes Yui, we'll definitely be friends again," said Yukino, and for the first time she was the one who initiated a crushing hug with Yui.


	9. Epilogue

Nozomi was in school, a real school with other children while Yukino was home preparing a picnic dinner. In a couple hours I would go and drive them here.

An incredibly handsome and muscular man in his fifties grunted as he worked lumber with traditional Japanese tools in a workshed he had made himself. He was building a home in the woods that would overlook a ravine, having stairs that zigzagged down to dock along a river.

"I could carry those." I chose the lesser of two evils and indicated the pile of lumber that had been delivered by the side of the road some two hundred meters away. Hand cutting intricate joints for beams that were to be joined without nails or any other fasteners looked too complex.

"No, Hachiman, it's important to me I do it all myself." These words were not spoken by a loner, but by a man who had always worked with teams, controlled somehow by machinations of his now deceased wife. "This will be my own house, not something chosen for me or made by anyone else. Building it'll be good practice, too, for my new career."

"What will you do, Yukinoshita-san?"

"I'm going to spend my time designing furniture and art, and sometimes actually making them."

I didn't ask if this was to support himself, I had no idea if he was allowed any money from the construction empire the government liquidated.

"Nozomi-chan and Yukino-chan are really happy, there was a short time when Yukino was very little that she and Haruno were happy, and I was happy... " Yukinoshita-san mind was lost in a past time for a few seconds. He examined the edge of the fret saw in his hand. "My wife didn't care about those kinds of feelings, always complained if I got sentimental over the children, or even my friends at work... since she was a young teen, she always was working on her plans, and I was just a useful tool she chose along the way and added to the shed. At least I got to design and build things, useful things, things that will be here for generations, but I'd trade all that for... "

I wasn't sure if I should say anything, but he was looking at me.

"A solid family, that's what I'll try to build. Something that will last. And you'll have time with Yukino, and Nozomi too, Yukinoshita-san."

* * *

On a darkly overcast day that was supposed to be without rain, we three took a trip to Yahashira Cemetery. We walked to a certain section of conspicuous opulence. We lay down camellias of a particular rose-purple color, to kneel before a gravestone while feeling gusts that were somewhat too cold for the season.

While Nozomi soon became distracted with butterflies and other bugs and with smelling flowers, Yukino and I reflected before a portrait, of what to us in our thirties looked like a "college girl". A huge grin was on a very young woman without a care or fear in her life, but her lifespan was fated to be soon cut short by a random misfortune that would forever close those powerful eyes that could either mock or be warm or be reptilian on a whim, that calamity conferring to her younger sibling a crushing burden.

"Nee-san said she was doomed to be an actor following an old script. She was so disappointed in me, said I was lucky to have freedom for the taking. She'd challenge me, why only sit in a cage that had the door open. When Nee-san died, I essentially agreed to have that door slammed shut."

Yukino contemplated her compunctions of long ago, of a path not taken.

"You know, Hachiman, Nee-san was the second person after Sensei to think you should be a part of my life in some way. Though responsibilities inherited from her life remain, still you've let me out of that cage." Yukino stood and turned to me, contentment on her visage.

We opened a thermos and dispensed green, not our usual red, tea into cups. We then first poured some tea from our cups into the ground, for Haruno. Then we drank.

_"If you ever start dating Yukino-chan for real, let's have tea together."_

Five years ago, a slight bulge had shown on her lissome frame. Her morals, reinvigorated after our bizarre trysts, would not let her end that little life, nor leave the marriage she had then, but rather inspired her to make a new path with her own hands, the best possible under heavy constraints. So was the justice of Yukinoshita Yukino.

Now, as was true five years ago in this very place, another little perturbance distended her figure, this time created by physical manifestation of our love for each other.

"Do you want to visit the other graves?" I inquired, it made no difference to me but was a difficult matter to Yukino. She nodded.

We walked a short distance to another grave, bearing a portrait of a very cold and unsmiling middle aged woman possessing the harsh beauty and aura of an empress radiating power and authority.

Yukino did not kneel nor perform any other Japanese custom for the dead, so neither did I. I knew something of the resentment long borne by Yukino, but would never know the entirety of the baggage imparted to her by that imperious woman with the force of will to take her own life rather than be dragged before courts of men or confined by prison.

"A spare part, a redundant tool, that's all I ever was to Mother. She was a malign spider who weaved so many webs she finally entrapped herself. I'll never visit this gravestone again," Yukino pronounced using her voice of ultimate conviction.

A marker without portrait was our final destination here. I looked at the happily preoccupied Nozomi who cared not for hunks of hewn stone. She seemed not to remember her biological father even when first we met. He would never be a part of Nozomi's reminiscing in later life, just a factoid Yukino would one day convey.

Somewhat to my surprise, Yukino washed the stone and knelt down. So then I followed her example, though at first I was merely watching Yukino seeming to be in long prayer. Then I realized an important truth, and gave thanks. She finally stood up and confirmed we were of one mind regarding James Snowden.

"I shall be forever grateful to him for my dear Nozomi, the singular grand achievement of his."

"Yes, I am also and so that's why I gave my thanks too."

"I'll be a mother of love and support."

"You already are, Yukino, and I'll be both a father and your mate of love and support."

"You already are, Hachiman."

We each took one of Nozomi's hands and left that place of the dead and of past regrets, that was even so a foundation of stepping stones toward our future.


End file.
